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Hi Mark,
What you’re describing, even without details like sets/years of specific cards, sounds to me like less valuable cards from the overproduced ‘junk wax’ years. Let me explain why I think so and what this means.
He has many, many rookie cards, O’Neal’s (including the expensive rookie cards), Bird, Johnson, etc.
“O’Neals” gives me a clue about when these cards are from because it’s a reference to Shaquille O’Neal, who was a rookie in 1992. The problem is that this was the pinnacle of the junk wax era, when cards were touted as ‘investments’, printed by the millions, and sold everywhere, even on Shop at Home TV.
There are two big problems with junk wax era cards. The first is the sheer quantity of them. Supply is much larger than demand. If you look up ‘Shaquille O’Neal rookie’ or ‘Shaquille O’Neal 1992’ on eBay, you will find tens of thousands of listings. There are a few specific rookie cards of his worth big money, for example the Stadium Club Beam Team “Members Only” parallel which you could only receive by mailing in a specific redemption card. But Shaq’s more common base rookie cards from sets like Fleer, Classic, Upper Deck and Topps — the ones you could get in regular packs and easily get multiples of — sell for less than $10 each and often as little as a dollar. See this listing as one of many, many examples — 6 Shaq rookies from one of the better sets, Fleer Ultra all in sleeves for $27 with free shipping.
The second issue with cards from the late 80s/mid 90s is that printing quality was much less consistent than it is today. So those cards often have slight edge, corner or surface issues even if they were immediately put into a hard sleeve and kept that way for thirty years. It sounds like these cards were cared for better than most, but that doesn’t mean they’re in perfect condition. The difference between a PSA 10 and a PSA 7 is small in terms of what you can see unless you really study the card closely, but the difference in value is quite large.
There are over 200 Jordan’s alone. The Jordan’s alone are worth over $100,000 if they are graded at a PSA 10. Most of the cards should grade near a 10.
There are a lot of Michael Jordan cards worth hundreds and thousands of dollars, but most of those are from the mid 1980s or mid 1990s to present. His earliest cards are very low supply and high demand, and desirable cards from the mid 1990s to present have specific design elements or attributes that make the cards valuable to collectors. While grading cards of this era (or any era) can often increase their value, merely grading a card doesn’t make it valuable. It’s the card itself. So the 200 Jordans aren’t “worth” $100,000 if they all receive a PSA 10 and “worth” nothing if they all receive a PSA 9. They have a value already, ungraded, and getting them graded can potentially increase that value, but their true value depends on the desirability of the cards themselves, not their grade. Here is a listing of 3 Michael Jordan 1991 Upper Deck cards which sold for $0.99 + shipping.
Let me put this another way. If you post pictures of key cards, or specific details like years and sets of particular cards, I can tell you whether you’re sitting on a pile of money or a pile of fool’s gold. With cards, it’s almost always the latter, especially cards from the 1987-1994 era. Even the best players, even in good condition. There were just too many made.
Ironically, the only reason prices cards are going up now is because companies have started to manufacture scarcity in the form of limited edition cards. That is how cards survived after the junk wax era and how we got to where we are today. But it doesn’t mean that all cards are worth a lot of money. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Mark S, I would be interested to know more about what’s in your friend’s hoard of cards from the 80s and 90s if you would feel comfortable sharing some of the details. There are a number of cards from that era, particularly key rookies (think Michael Jordan, etc) or rare error cards, which regularly command prices four or five figure sales prices, especially in high grades. But there is often a conflation between perceived value of ‘sports cards’ in general and what most cards actually sell for, particularly among stuff from the 80s-90s junk wax era. People hear ‘sports cards’ and often think (particularly in the last year or two) that any cards are worth money when that’s far from the truth. I would hate to see you waste your time trying to sell cards which aren’t particularly valuable.
With that said, with items of that size there are a number of options besides you sell it and take on all the risk. There are a number of reputable consigners — the two most well known are PWCC and Probstein — where you can send them the cards and they will handle the listing and shipping of your cards for a fee. For the most part, it’s slightly more than you will pay listing them yourself, but it’s only a percentage or two more because they deal in such volume. There is also an almost built-in customer base with their listings because they have so many auctions running every week, I am talking thousands of auctions a week. Ironically, it’s that volume which is why I can’t recommend PWCC or Probstein — both have been named as defendants in a class action suit for knowingly selling altered cards. See this link for just the tip of the iceberg:
https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/altered-cards-class-action-lawsuit-psa-pwcc-probstein/There are some ‘smaller’ consigners who I regularly buy from and would have no problem consigning with if I ever choose to sell that way — pc_sportscards, dcsports87 and hoodyscollectibles are their usernames. I believe that all three have websites outside ebay as well. There are many, many other honest sellers as well, but these are a few whom I’ve dealt with regularly and who have a great reputation through collector message boards like Blowout Forums.
If you truly have a hoard of very valuable cards, I would actually suggest that eBay might not be your best bet, and a reputable auction house like Robert Edward or Goldin will get more eyes on your items. Collectors who are serious about collecting very expensive cards are more likely to buy their cards through a source like that.
Let me add this as far as selling cards on eBay using your own id. I have over 7000 feedback on my selling id and have never had a problem with someone trying to scam me that didn’t involve some kind of mistake on my end (usually an obvious mistake with the condition). Are there scammers in the card world? Sure. But that’s a risk you run with selling on eBay, period. I have sold graded cards and ungraded cards, everything from <$10 to cards over $500 and even a few in the thousands. I have sold one card to one buyer and dozens of cards to one buyer. I used to do auctions although I almost exclusively do buy it now/best offer listings now. If you have a good title, take good pictures, and note any condition issues with the cards in your description, you will be fine.
As far as shipping goes, I generally use 6×6 or 7×11 envelopes. Every card goes in a thin soft sleeve, an appropriate sized hard sleeve (also called a toploader) and a team bag which is a resealable thin plastic bag. Always wrap a card with cardboard on both sides (a ‘cardboard sandwich’ basically) and anything above $50 or so, I also wrap in bubble wrap. For very expensive cards, I send them in a box and will add signature confirmation and/or insurance. Some sellers (especially less experienced ones who I buy from all the time) skimp on some of these supplies, and often the card arrives safe anyway, but I prefer to take no chances with packaging.
eBay has made some recent policy changes to reduce buyer’s remorse returns, since card prices can be so volatile, but again those types of returns are not something I’ve ever really dealt with across thousands of transactions. I sell about 50 items a week and my last return was something like three months ago, and it was a very low value card (less than $20).
Hope this helps!
You should be proud of the business you’ve built. We know that struggle in the early days of listing listing listing. Must feel nice.
Thanks Jay. I am lucky to have a supportive partner and to have found this community, which is such a huge source of inspiration and positivity especially compared to most eBay/flipping forums.
I am still adjusting to not having to list 20+ items every day. That was how I got to this point. Before I built up my inventory with good sellable items, I might have a good week or two of sales (especially around the holidays) but I didn’t have a big enough inventory or items that consistently sold for >$20 to sustain that.
But good things happen if you keep learning, and adapting, and putting in the work to feed the pipeline.
All my missing listings were back in the Active List by this morning.
Yes, it looks like all of mine (or all but a few) are back this morning, as I’m back at my usual level of ~2300 give or take a few. Impressive that eBay was able to fix such a wide-ranging problem so quickly!
One of my goals for this month is to start tracking my weekly numbers more precisely, and I thought a way of holding myself accountable would be to post them here each week.
I mostly sell modern sports cards, so I have high sales numbers but also very high inventory costs, typically around 1/3 of my net sales and occasionally more than that.
2/21/21 – 2/27/21
Total items in store: 2309
Items sold: 76
Gross sales: $2765.25
Net sales: $2008.66
Highest price sold: $180 — A glass card of Boston Celtics star forward Jayson Tatum
Lowest price sold: $6.38 — A green parallel (a parallel is like the regular ‘base’ card but decorated with a different color or foil or finish) #3/5 (meaning there were only 5 of this particular green parallel — other colors have numbering to 10, 25, 50, etc.) of New York Jets safety Jamal Adams
This may seem like a crazy amount of packages, but one buyer purchased 16 items from me and a few others, including the buyer who bought the lowest price sold, purchased multiple items. So I did 12-15 packages every other day, a manageable routine since most of my packages are very small (4×8 envelopes) and quick to pack up.
This has been a fairly typical sales volume for me over the last year or so, though my average sales price has slowly risen from <$20 to $35 or $40 while my inventory level has remained mostly stable. I rarely list items for less than $20 anymore, but for a couple years that was how I built up my store from a few hundred items to the level it’s at now.
I looked up my sales from 1 year ago and my net sales are up 107.6% this year!!! Really puts things in perspective.
So grateful for your updates, Amatino. I’m bleeding listings at this point, down to around 1200, but it’s good to know that this is being worked on. For the most part, eBay is pretty good about quickly handling problems like this that affect a huge number of users…(hopefully not famous last words!!)
I just watched this happen in the process of my weekly routine of sending out offers to watchers. I see 1397 listings in my seller hub on both desktop and mobile and 2311 active on mobile. I’m not the type to waste a lot of energy about these sorts of things, but I don’t use SixBit or InkFrog so I’m a little squirrelly right now!
This is really fascinating. Thanks for the inside scoop on how the card world works. Like the craziness around penny stocks right now, there seems to be a lot of “gambling” going on.
It’s a really interesting parallel to the fervor around Gamestop and other stocks. In some ways, the speculation around cards is very similar and I would guess that a lot of people who make money from those non-traditional investments (crypto, penny stocks, etc) are also buying and selling expensive cards and unopened boxes of cards.
Interestingly, if you invested in the top high end cards (Tom Brady, Michael Jordan, LeBron James etc) 3 or 5 or 10 years ago, you’d have made more money — probably significantly more — than any traditional investment. Of course, pick the wrong players and your collection is worth a fraction of even what you paid for it.
But that’s the interesting thing about cards. There is an almost inherent sentimentality to them since they are a tangible, and often completely unique, object you can hold and admire. I don’t feel an attachment to any of the cards that I sell, but I have no trouble understanding why buyers purchase individual cards for more than I paid for them. Many of the modern ‘chase’ cards have neat and unusual designs, plus there is the speculative aspect and fandom aspect on top of that.
So I won’t be surprised if many of the new ‘gamblers’ who have moved to cards continue to buy and sell cards in the future. I expect prices for all cards, from vintage to modern, will decrease across the board once people can more freely do other things with their times, like go to packed stadiums to watch their favorite team in a game. But we are still likely some time away from that, and in the meantime it’s nice to be able to scavenge without having to risk my health or anyone else’s.
The careful resealing is fairly common with retail trading cards — it’s known as pack searching, and it’s heavily frowned upon but far too common in a world where people are always chasing after an easy dollar.
TCGs like World of Warcraft are not my niche, but I sell cards regularly. My advice with a large lot of cards is to do 1 of 3 things:
1. List everything as 1 large lot, take 12 good pictures (everything from all the cards in one shot to focusing in on individual cards), use every relevant keyword in the title and list it as a buy it now/best offer starting at $50 or $100 or something like that. Key piece is to not get crazy with the price, anyone buying a lot is taking a chance but you’d be surprised how many collectors just love to sift through big piles of cards.
2. Sort the lot by various similar types (weapons? foils?) and make multiple lots, listed at a lower average price. The key here is patience: certain lots might sell right away and others could take months, if not years.
3. Do your research on individual cards and piece out any that are worth listing. For some people, this is anything above $5. For me, it’s $20 or higher.
There is a fourth option which is to limit your research to a set time (say an hour) and at the end of that time, if you haven’t uncovered anything worth your time, maybe move on to something more profitable.
I mention that because from my research, it seems that WoW card lot prices vary wildly but are largely dependent on two factors: condition and (especially) deck type. Rarer deck types appear to be very hot commodities but the more common decks (which is by far the likeliest to end up in a thrift store) hold very little value, and practically nothing if the condition is not immaculate.
This is my world. I’ve flipped cards off and on for the last ten years, and full-time for the last two. I’m not a collector at all (hence why I’ve been on this forum) but I had grown up around cards, so I already had a base of knowledge about what cards might be valuable when I started scavenging. Cards are like anything else, if you do the research, you can figure out what’s valuable and what’s not.
The methodology behind my eBay business is pretty simple, and maybe not what you’d expect. I never open packs. I buy almost everything as single cards at auction and resell the same cards using buy it now/best offer. There are literally millions of sports card auctions ending at any given time because there are always new sets coming out (literally hundreds of sets every year) and as we are all aware, not everyone who sells on eBay uses the platform to its fullest potential. Also, another scavenger principle: auctions are incredibly fickle. I never feel an impulse to keep any of the cards myself, but I can certainly understand why others do. Now more than ever, cards are unique — part curiosity, but part investment.
A lot of the boom in cards right now is about scarcity. Cards from the period of the 80s and 90s are from an era of extreme overproduction, commonly called the ‘junk wax’ era. While there are still plenty of cards that hold value from that era, the iconic Michael Jordan 86-87 Fleer rookie being the most notable example, by and large there are just so many millions of cards made in that period that supply always exceeds demand.
The way card companies adapted in the late 90s going forward was by manufacturing scarcity. Instead of card collecting being about completing the set, as it had been throughout most of the 20th century, manufacturers started making ‘chase’ cards — so 1 in every 10 packs you might get a shiny ‘refractor’ card, a different pattern or foil finish with a limited edition serial number, or an autograph, a card with a jersey piece, or a special ‘insert’ with a fun design. 20 years of that have led to a card industry that’s almost entirely centered around those kinds of cards, often in combination. For example: cards often have an autograph, a jersey piece, a serial number, and a crazy/shiny design, and predictably enough a pack is much more likely to get a backup or average player than a superstar. It helps that collectors who grew up with cards in the 90s are now adults with disposable income, and eBay has also connected collectors around the world for 25+ years now. So while there is a lot of hype around cards right now, there has always been a market for collectors and my expectation is that market will continue to some degree until something disrupts it.
It is a weird time though. There are so many ‘investors’ putting at least some money in cards that there are often huge swings in prices (usually around a particular player) in a very short amount of time. Again, I’m pretty insulated from all this, since I’m a relatively small fish. I have a solid inventory of about 2,500 items. I sell about 50 items each week. My average sales price is about $50.
But I often bid on auctions from huge sellers, the type profiled in ‘sports cards booming’ type of article, and I wonder sometimes how stressful it must be to sell millions of dollars of cards in a year. Definitely not my dream! But for now, this is a life.
If anyone has questions about cards they’re trying to sell, or what their relative value might be, I’d be happy to try and help out.
I had a purchase go unscanned from December 3rd to 23rd, then show up in my PO Box within two days of opening a missing mail case.
But I have that beat with a sale that was finally delivered today after 21 days – December 3rd to 24th. NJ to Arizona. The package took a detour to Oregon in the first week of its journey, but still ended up at an Arizona USPS hub by December 10th. Then the tracking stopped until the buyer opened an INR case and I opened a missing mail case. Happily, the buyer received the package (which was a Christmas gift) today on Christmas eve. Couldn’t have scripted it better if I tried!
In case anyone needs the link…
If anyone has recommendations for a standing desk (either DYI or something to purchase), please share. I have a cheap one (can’t even find a brand name on it) which has gotten the job done for the last few years, but I’m at a point of wanting to upgrade to something that is more sturdy.
When I’m at my most productive (which has not been the case these last few weeks — LOL!), I am good about batching tasks, and build in exercise (and meditation) as part of that routine. Take 10 pictures, do a set of push-ups and sit-ups. Finish 5 listings, do some light cardio. The standing desk makes all of this a lot easier than plopping down into a chair for 2 hours at a time would. I’m sure that some would be more productive with a set time for exercise separate from their ebay time. But this feels natural for me.
0.6% click through, 2.0% conversion rate.
I don’t use promoted listings, and wonder if/how these stats compare to someone who does.
This has become my main niche over the last few years, so I can share something of an insider’s perspective.
First, this is a change that trading card sellers have been clamoring about forever. For cards that sell less than $10, most sellers still ship PWE (plain white envelope) — put the card in a thin plastic case, wrap the case with the invoice, put a stamp on the envelope and send it on its way. But without a tracking number, unscrupulous buyers would often claim item not received. Not anymore.
Second, as far as the shortened return policy — the impetus behind it is that card values can fluctuate wildly. Let me give an example from the most recent baseball season. The Tampa Bay Rays went on a surprise run to the World Series, fueled by a rookie outfielder named Randy Arozarena who only made the team for the playoffs because other key players were injured late in the season. Much to everyone’s surprise, Arozarena set a record for most playoff home runs in baseball history and in fact he hit more home runs in the playoffs than he had in the regular season.
Before the playoffs, Arozarena’s autographed rookie cards were typically only selling for a few dollars, with some going for more depending on factors that collectors value (aesthetics, features of the card, rarity). But you could buy almost any of his autographs, even the most desirable ones, for $20 or less, which is typical of most unknown players who don’t have a strong collector base.
However, as Randy led the Rays to their World Series run, hitting key home runs in seemingly every game, his autograph prices rose dramatically. His “common” autographs (thinner card stock, no foil numbering or embellishments to the cards) rose from $5 to $20 to $50 or more by the time the World Series finished up. His rarer autographs were routinely selling in the hundreds and some even in the low thousands. They are down from that peak right now (since card prices always dip in a sport’s offseason), but they will perk up again when the next season starts and if Arozarena begins the season hitting home runs at the same historic rate — look out!
Often the opposite story happens in sports — a star player has a devastating injury being the most common example. Their card values won’t necessarily drop to zero the next day, because there are still a lot of true collectors in it for the completionist aspect or motivated to add to their PC (personal collections). Not everyone who buys and sells cards is chasing autographs, either — some prefer a player’s first year (rookie) cards, others like cards with a piece of jersey or other garment in them and others chase after insert cards, which are cards with a unique design or color finish inserted every x number of packs or boxes. For an example of how expensive the rarest inserts can get, look up sold listings for Panini Color Blast (ignore the keyword spammers) and prepare to have your mind blown.
Multiply all of these factors by the different leagues and sports and sets (everything from thick, shiny and $$$$ to thin, boring and still $$ since cards are pretty expensive) and you can start to see how 45 million cards have sold this year. eBay’s changes and proposed changes within the collectibles and cards categories have been very seller friendly since Jamie Iannone replaced Wenig as CEO, and most card sellers are not mega corporations but small fish in a massive pond like I am. So hopefully this a good sign for how eBay looks at us mom n pop sellers.
goomba478,
I’m right there with you as far as managed payments getting me to stop obsessing over individual profit margins. I enjoyed the routine of updating my inventory spreadsheets every few weeks even though this year has led to a sales level (50-75 orders a week) where that became cumbersome. I’m glad that the managed payment files that we can export are as clean as Paypal’s; no need to spend time on that minutia when it’s (almost) all automated for us.
