When NOT to Sell Your Baseball Cards

Dean's Cards would appreciate the opportunity to bid on your collection, but after buying thousands of collections over the years, we have learned to identify a few "red flags" that often signal when a collection will not get sold. I bring this point up to share our experience and hopefully save some people a lot of time and effort.

The most common reason that collectors end up not selling a collection is that he may be still emotionally attached to the cards. Even though a person may not have looked at his cards in twenty years, once the cards come out of the closet those old memories of his boyhood start to resurface. He is often transported back to a simpler time and place.

After all that is what card collecting in all about - middle aged men reliving their boyhoods! I certainly understand this emotion and probably will not ever sell my collection. Therefore the liquidation of the collections are usually left to love ones or heirs who know little to nothing about baseball cards.

Very often the original collector will have a very unrealistic expectation of the collections true value. Unfortunately, sports cards are only worth what someone is willing to pay for them. That price rarely can satisfy a collector's emotional value of the cards.

If you are a collector and you feel that you will "sell the collection IF the price is right", let me try to save you some time and effort. The folks that we hear this comment from rarely end up selling their collection. It seems the price never is and the seller never does!

On the other hand, the statement that we love to hear is "I decided that I am definitely going to sell my collection. I want to get a good price for it, but I am definitely going to sell it." It seems we end up buying almost all of these collections. We do not mind paying "top dollar".

Many of the times that the original collector actually does sell the collection, the proceeds are often earmarked for a special event. Checks from Dean's Cards have helped pay for many weddings, cars and semesters of college tuition. I love hearing those stories. What a great way to use the money - especially if your cards have been sitting in the closet for the last ten years. It also gives a new vintage card collector a chance to enjoy the cards.

On the other hand, we also see people sell vintage collections to pay off big bills. Although those stories are not near as happy, I am still glad that the value of the cards can help out these families in times of financial difficulty.

By Dean Hanley