I have literally hundreds, maybe low thousands, of singles worth $3-$15 a piece with no place to store them. I want to sell them but the time and effort it takes to take pics, gauge condition, create listing, fees, shipping, dealing with dumb buyers etc etc doesn’t seem worth it.
I’m probably sitting on 3k worth of bullshit but I don’t know the best way to sell them. Just looking at all these cards is so overwhelming!!!
Wish I stuck to purchasing PSA graded cards. They’re much easier to sell. Wish I never opened modern product lol too many cards!!! like what the hell am I going to do with 200 reverse holo generations cards lmfao. wait a hundred years and hope they’re worth 50 cents a piece?!? anyone want some NM 1st ed rocket commons lmao how about some played ex cards??? how about some off centered cards in played condition. nothing tickles your fancy? that’s okay, I also have THOUSANDS of penny sleeves and HUNDREDS of toploaders that can be yours for the low, low price of who gives a shit
You’re not an idiot for purchasing cards that you enjoy or enjoyed at some point. The value in the hobby isn’t all monetary, you should be able to derive value out of nostalgia or other emotions the cards make you feel. It’s okay to feel overwhelmed at what you have purchased, that will provide clarity towards guiding your collection in the future.
As far as offloading large quantities of singles in that price range, I recommend creating listings of 3 ring binders full of cards. Separate your cards into lots of 108, as eBay allows 12 free photos per listing, so you will take a single picture of each page with 9 cards on it, totaling 108 cards. There are plenty of buyers out there just looking for variety, so make sure each lot has a couple of higher end more desirable items. This is a lot less work than creating a thousand listings and you’ll get some of your money back. Go for auctions if you want to sell fast or go the buy it now best offer route if you can afford to wait. Hopefully, that helps.
I don’t know how profitable/worthwhile it is with pokemon but I do it all the time with MTG, I don’t have time to try and find buyers for a $5-$20 card that I have 30 copies of multiplied by 1000s of unique cards so I ship them all off to stores. They buy them all and I get like $2.50-$3 a card instead of $5 (just an example), so I lose 20-40% depending on the card but I can dump everything for really low effort.
Usually you can get a bonus if you take credit (eg. troll and toad gives 25% extra) so you can realise higher value and consolidate into graded cards or high value singles if you want to try and realise max value of your cards. Eg. Instead of taking cash, take credit with a bonus, buy a high value item that you know you can sell for close to what you pay with your credit and you can easily make a lot more cash for a little extra work.
If you legitimately have $3,000 worth of singles you’d get over a third of that for a no effort eBay auction and likely even clear over half that. Well sorted and split out into maybe 6 or 8 smaller lots you could approach 2k likely. Factoring time and sanity into it all this is well worth it and I do auctions every so often this way.
It however is fairly likely you may be overestimating the value of your cards too. You can’t look at bulk modern stuff and call it anything other than bulk. Sure the occasional person sells 0.25 or even $1 modern reverse holos but the time and effort it takes to get that as well as if you sell them one at a time fees will eat you alive. Same goes for $2-$3 singles on eBay they sell over at T&T for $1-$1.50 usually and again… fees and time.
What I like to do is sort into lots by set and condition. Then just take a few pics of the front and back of all the cards. Provide no description of the cards other than general condition and set name.
You will take probably at least a 25% - 30% loss vs. selling the singles themselves, depending on the way you organize the lots, but you save a lot of time.
If I sell a lot of NM 1st edition commons and uncommons of say, 40 - 50 cards from a WOTC set, it takes me about 10 - 20 minutes to sort, 10 minutes for pics, 5 - 10 minutes listing. Might sell for around $25 - 30 depending on the set and maybe more if I include a holo or two or some rares.
Some singles are worth it though. My cutoff is if I can get at least $10 for the single, I don’t include it in lots.
Gonna bookmark this thread and read everything later. I’m currently in the process of organizing my 7,000+ bulk of duplicated cards to sell in the (hopefully near) future as well. Just organizing to see what I have already takes a couple of weeks, few hours in the weekend/evening at a time… But since I already had people ask me if I had a certain card on multiple occasions, and I was pretty sure I had it, but couldn’t find it anywhere in this huge box of junk singles, I decided to once and for all organize them…
Organizing them is step 1 however… Actually doing everything else you mentioned:
This is just part of collecting! If it makes you feel any better I have probably 30-50k worth of ungraded cards. Maybe one day I will do something with them!
Right there with you. I think I’m going to sell the majority of it to troll and toad, and then list some other things in lots. I’ll eat the cost of convenience, personally.
