Old collection: What to do?

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Hey everyone. This is my first post here, and i signed up mainly for this.

I used to collect pokemon cards like 10-12 years ago, and made a pretty decent collection (i’m assuming it’s somewhere between 1000 and 1500 cards), along with some other stuff, like jumbo cards, a full compliment of clothes pin badges etc…

Now i recently dug all of it up again, and i’m unsure what to do at this point. I don’t really have an interest in starting up collecting again (sorry, guess i don’t have that much to do on a collectors forum =P), mostly because the whole thing have moved quite far since i played back then.

So what i’m asking here is what you’d recommend i do with the collection. It seems card prices for cards from back then have dropped severely (i remember the store charging around 100 US$ for a single holo-foil card back then. Not that i ever bought single cards.), so is it pretty much ready to burn? Or could there be stuff in-there worth actually digging out?

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ill take them :grin: lol

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Honestly, if you want to pitch it, you’ll have to take it to a local card shop and take a price cut for it or go to eBay and out the time into researching each item and listing it to sell. I can’t really imagine any other serious selling options.

I’m obligated as a collector to suggest you keep it.
I’m also obligated as an administrator to remind you not to sell it here in the event you do decide to sell, as our rules state you must reach a certain point in your participation here to sell on this board.

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@funmonkey54: Yeah, i read the rules before posting. Don’t worry, i’m not going to simply use this place as a marketplace. I’m writing here to ask the experts about this, to find more information.

Also, why not sell it? If the current trend is any indication, pokemon card values seems to be dropping rather than rising?

I appreciate the feedback of course, and i am indeed looking through the listings for cards like mine, but with a collection of this size, i feel a bit overwhelmed, and kind of at a loss for what to really look for.

So far i’ve only really established that sellers seems to want quite a lot for shiny pokemon, which i have a few of. Not sure how/where to sell myself, except for just eBay as well.

And i’m not aware of any local card shops at all. Could be one in the capital, but otherwise i think i’m out of luck on that end.-

Edit: I noticed that some sites keep track of error-printed cards. Does these print errors have any significance, or is it just curious information?

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Honestly, I’m not seeing the price drop you mentioned. Many graded cards are stable or rising. Modern Ultra Rares have never held their value this well, particularly this close to rotation. Bulk prices are the highest they’ve ever been. The market is doing great! Haha.

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i think ebay is the solution for you

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If you’d like an idea of value and the best way to sell them you’d have to state what you have. If you have 1500 non holos they may be worth 0.00. If you have 1500 holos or shinys they could be worth thousands.
Condition matters too.

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I also disagree about the prices. This is basically the skinny on pokemon prices. When pokemon first came out it boomed and prices skyrocketed in some cases getting to $100 for a Charizard for instance. Shortly after this boom prices tanked and most got out of pokemon. But like many things they slowly increase in price over time which is what pokemon has done. If your looking at new card’s prices then you’ll be thrown off because that’s like comparing apples to oranges. Looking at the older cards from the original era, most go for great prices right now IF, and that’s a big if, the condition is Mint or close to it. So like others said it depends what old cards you have and their condition. eBay will be a lot of work to sell but judging by the number of cards you said you have, you may be able to sell them as sets which would simplify things. Good luck

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@funmonkey54/timewaster1700: You might be right. As explained, i played over 10 years ago, and i mostly remember that buying holos as single cards from the store felt exceedingly expencive (though looking at what first edition shadowless charizards go for now… i wish i had made that investment), while most cards look to be worthless these days, far less than most of the other holos sold for back then. Then again, maybe my card shop just ripped off us kids?

@not zelda gilroy: This was a collection built by buying boosters, and with the intent of playing the game, not collecting, so i think i have about 1:11 of holos. maybe less.
still, i think i have somewhere around 7-800 commons, 2-300 uncommons (a few holo for some reason?), 1-200 rares, which is about 50/50 of being holo or not.
On top of that, i was that cardclubs “official gym leader”, which means i’ve got one of those small green stamps that we used to stamp that weekly playing book with, along with said book for my own playing.
A full set of those clothes pin badges. (all 8 badges existing back then. duplicates of some)
A bunch of damage markers. (both colored glass kind, and 10 dmg cardboard duds)
3 Jumbo cards (Tyranitar,raichu,charizard)
The Southern Islands set of binder, cards and postcards.

I was always a careful guy, so most of my cards are very good condition. always used deck protectors for the cards i played with, and stored the cards i didn’t play with in the collection folder, with those 9-pocket pages. The cards i traded to over time with others are less so, but that’s a minority of my cards. Most holos came straight out of the booster and into the special binder (southern islands binder), for my holos, and not many actually made it into a deck, so i’d say most of them are still near-mint at worst.

Among those holos i sport 5 triple-star “shiney” pokemon cards. (the Shining Noctowl is first edition)
Mostly older holos from the base set/jungle/rocket series, with some full-card holos from aquapolis and neo exploration. (no shadowless, apparently that was changed before pokemon cards even got to my country)

I figure as a full collection it might be worth at least a fair amount. Just trying to figure out if there are some of them that would be better off being sold as single cards?