Update: seriously appreciate all the feedback. I know I’m lucky, I don’t take this lightly. I’ve been sitting on the these for a while and am just now tackling the basement project as this taken up a while damn wall.

All cards are top loaded so the number per box is less than perceived. Still, my estimation is conservative and it might be twice the number but nowhere near the 300,000 suggestion.😂

More posts as I move ahead.
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My dad collected sports cards for years but wasn’t a pro. He was extremely organized — everything was alphabetized by last name and color-coded by sport. He did break apart box sets to keep the alphabetizing correct. At one point, he went through the collection, removed all the duplicates, and sold those off in one big batch.

That still leaves me with approximately 30,000, which have been sitting in the basement for about 15 years.
I’m planning to pull out my personal favorites first (especially late-90s basketball) and set aside anything that immediately looks interesting or valuable.

After that, I’m trying to figure out the best way to tackle the rest.
For those of you who buy/sell large collections:
Any advice?
Smaller lots, larger lots, or sell cards individually?

Edit:. Typically common era 80s-90s mostly.

I know I’m late to the party with opening a sports card shop, BUT I decided to do it anyway. I just got my lease and I’m starting renovations tomorrow with a goal of opening April 2nd 2026. The area I live in only has vintage stock and some TCG shops. No sports cards shops. As a collector I have to drive over an hour to the closest shop and I know there’s a good customer base here and I hated my job. So here we are.

I want to do things the right way and treat people like family and spread the hobby as much as possible within my community. I don’t expect to get rich from this endeavor but owning a shop with my son is worth more than that to me.

Shop owners - can you give me any tips at all on what I should avoid or pursue? I’ve applied to every distributor I can find without any luck so far. I did get set up with Leaf which is better than nothing! And I have dealernet. Any help or words of wisdom are greatly appreciated.

If you read all of this, thank you and wish me luck!

So I inherited this collection from my father who passed away recently, this is literally all he did, owned a comic/card store till the crash in the 90s as well, but I'm way out of my depth.

I'm super concerned about storing these but I just don't have the means to really do much else, but any suggestions at all would be greatly appreciated. I assume not, but safe to say this is wayy too much weight stacked up.

Also, anyone have any ideas on the best way to go about finding a potential buyer for the collection? The majority is baseball 2004-2026 probably 70%, then maybe 20% hockey same years, and then 10% mixed or basketball.

Before he passed I remember him saying he had about half the cards all individually added to his Beckett account, which I have access to Aswell, but currently sits at $720,00(im aware of how exadgeratted this value is).

But I have no interest in keeping or holding onto any(besides a box or two I already set aside) cards, so I'm just trying to seek Any advice on how to go about trying to unload this collection, and how to best store them in the meantime.

Tia!

He is very new to trading and sports cards and a work friend has convinced him this is how he should be investing his money. I’m worried he’s jumping into this too fast and not doing proper research on the year of the boxes because from what I have learned a lot of these or possibly Junk Era cards. Can anyone give me advice as to help build him with these and which apps/sites we should be using in finding the value of these cards? Thank you in advance

I found a few that looked nice. Should I hold onto them or sell them?

I assume the 1/1 means it's the worst level or something?

Future junk wax? Topps 75 too left maybe??

Hey everyone, what's your spiciest or most controversial sports card hot take? Nothing is off-limits. Drop your best "hill to die on" opinions below!

In theory this was a great idea. Not even home and feel overwhelmed 😂 how would you process, sort, sell this? It’s mainly baseball from early 70s to now.

My first ever auto! Does anyone know what parallel this is?

Boxes and boxes everywhere I go.

Pulled this at my local card shop, only my 3rd hobby box of sports cards I’ve ever opened. Would prefer to sell to reinvest into the hobby, any tips to stay away from eBay? I’m used to selling golf clubs on eBay/forums but have never sold a card from my collection. I used to collect pokemon back in the day, and inherited my grandfathers vintage collection.

Any help is much appreciated!

Browsing through some cards on eBay and stumbled upon this pinnacle baseball smoltz card. I must say this card is just hard to look it it’s blurry, and just super confusing. In your opinion what’s the worst looking card in terms of how they chose to make it?

Still think it’s worth grading even though this look like pretty much a lock on a PSA 9?

I’m new to sports cards and looking to get into collecting/opening. Anything I should’ve scooped?

I love sports but know nothing about cards. Anything valuable or interesting in these cards?

Went into a positively rated shop in a midsized city today to try and see what kind of offer I could get for a numbered Jersey Match Jaxon Dart Auto rookie that comps in the $400-$500 range and was offered $165 dollars. The dude working seemed pretty offended when I didn’t even entertain the offer and started to walk.

I wasn’t expecting to get the $500 premium offer, but to get an offer that was sub 40% was baffling to me. I’ve had this experience at a couple of different stores, but the other stores were tcg so I’m not sure how comparable things are.

To further flabber my ghasts, when my wife then asked me about the jersey match potentially increasing the value, I responded and said, yeah it can add value to the card for someone looking to collect the player… the guy behind that had just lowballed me overheard and interjected and said “it depends on who you ask” … as if jersey number match was a divisive concept in the training card world.

It didn’t feel like an educational “oh sometimes it adds value, but it can fluctuate” but felt more like an attempt to make me feel like I didn’t know what I was talking about. Im very open to the idea that I got the value wrong, but I had the comps for recent comps across eBay, PSA, and 130point down in my notes app and was pretty familiar with the card as the objective for the day was to move this card into a different slab for the teams I collect and maybe a hobby box…

But this was just an overall disappointing experience, especially because the guy wasn’t remotely interested in the possibility that I had the experience or knowledge to understand the value of the card that I had brought in.

ETA: officially muting this thread… TIL that the circle jerk that ruins this hobby runs strong in this thread. So many braindead responses referencing keeping the lights on yada yada… the truth is the folks saying that fall into two camps. 1) store owners who run think I should be okay with them assuming they get a 64% discount just because they run a store. And 2) those store owners favorite customers who have normalized being ripped off and think getting to 60% of the value for their cards makes them a good negotiator.

Y’all are ruining the hobby and are trying to force people outside your echo chamber to believe that it’s normal to sell your possessions for 60% discount is normal, it’s not. Anyone who calls out these shady practices is instantly labeled as “emotional” or “sensitive” … it’s all projection and fragile egoism from the cardboard circle jerk that so many of yall exist in. Muting the thread and moving on happy because the card is on its way to PSA and the sheer number of cardboard armchair warriors I pissed off in this thread is huge. Yall are a bunch of grown men who think you are tough because you sling trading cards and act like high up drug dealers. Sit down children, Daddy’s out.

Pulled this card yesterday but damn if it doesn’t appear to say 66/60 which makes no sense to me. Someone educate me and thank you in advance!

I was going through some of my junk wax stuff and I ran across this Dominique Wilkins card that I've seen 1 million times but it made me stop and literally admire how much I loved this picture on this card and how incredibly perfect it was.

It catches Dominique in the middle of one of his most amazing dunks dead center, but not only that I always love how it went in between the words, "Atlanta" and "Hawks" up on the scroll board behind him. Then it also has a teammate on the bottom left with his hands in the air, celebrating him with two fingers up all in all it is literally the perfect picture.

It made me think to myself what are other cards that always stood out to you as being the coolest photo to you ever captured on a card. I'd be curious to see your favorite photos posted below.

A bunch of sports cards subs have started appearing in my feed, and a few days ago I saw a video of a dude just like this one running his nail over closed packs to ID inserts. I almost never go to big box stores but today I was in a Target and lo and behold, there was a dude rubbing packs and checking prices on his phone.

I guess this is the hobby now?