Baseball Cards – I know NADA

I am the card guy on the forums. It is my full-time business. I’m sorry to let you know that these aren’t worth anything at all. They’re from the junk wax era (mid 80s to early 90s) where cards were overproduced (literally in the millions) and the vast, vast majority (regardless of player) aren’t worth much 30 years later, even in the best condition. Most cards you might find at a thrift/flea market/estate sale are from this time period.

You have a much better chance to find valuable cards if you find a seller with ultra modern cards (mid/late 90s to present) or vintage (60s and earlier). Ultra modern cards get their value from the card’s features (autograph, individual serial number, popular set) and vintage cards get their value from desirability of the set. The player on the card and its condition matter for all cards. Usually cards in better condition are kept in some kind of individual hard or soft sleeve, so if you don’t see that, it’s another sign that you are probably looking at common, junk wax cards.

Side note: I saw a Herm Winningham card in there. I saw him hit a home run in ‘91 against the Dodgers when he played for the Reds. Turns out that was his only home run in 1991. I saw HISTORY be made!

yep, that bit of knowledge is probably worth about as much as those cards.

but a person with that kind of memory would be who would give you a $1 for that card on eBay for a bit of nostalgia.

Some cards you should keep an eye out for are Pokemon and Magic The gathering. If you can get a handful for a buck or two of either one, you can make an easy $10-20 even if you know nothing about them. Just lay them all out and take overall photo and then a bunch of close ups so people can see detail on every card.

Make a listing and start it as an auction for $9.99 or $19.99. See what happens. The buyers will let you know if you have something valuable.

If it doesn’t sell as an auction, just put it out there as a BIN listing with offer.

I’ve sold lots of 50-100 Magic cards this way and always get $20-30 even without anything special and not great condition.

To underscore how little value these cards have, I bought a lot of about 10,000 cards from this era for about $20 thinking, surely, there had to be something of value.  After putting a box of 5000 up for auction and getting no bids, I put the box up for $20.  After several months of no few views and no offers, I took an offer of $10 for the box, plus shipping of something like $17 (large flat rate box).  Fortunately, there was a set of 41 chrome basketball cards that I sold for $42, but a lot time spent learning that they are basically worthless.  Still have a box of about 5000 football cards that I haven’t listed since it isn’t even worth the effort to take pictures.

Got to be careful with the junk wax era especially if its not HOFers.