Well that settles it. 5 million cards it is!

There's always going to be money in rookie cards at least. Especially when people are throwing down 20 grand on Bryce Harper or Stephen Strasburg RCs. Despite this thread, it still makes me want to firesale my collection.

On the flip side, there couldn't be a better time to get autographed/game-used cards than now.

OP - Here is how you play it. This strategy assumes that you itemize your taxes.

Step 1 - Get all info together that you planned on gathering
Step 2 - Drop off at Goodwill
Step 3 - Get 30% of Fair market value at tax time.

This is going to net you about $30 which is probably on the high side of what you would have gotten from Ebay with much less hassle, fees etc.

My co-worker uses this strategy with comic books every year. Turbo tax says that the FMV of comics is about $1 so even if they are worth less than 10 cents a piece he gets 0.35 back per book at tax time.

He also goes out and buys huge lots of comics in bulk then writes them off when he sells them back.

zero

Little update on this ...

I put up the whole collection on CL. Not one bite. Not even scammers. Lol.

I put up 100 cards starting at .01 @ 4.95 shipping. Not one bid. Then I bumped it up to 500 cards starting at. 01 @ 4.95 shipping. Not one bid. Ugh.

msr,

Did you catalog the collection?

Add tinder to the keywords.

put them in your spokes

Yep had a Beckett value of 50$. Lol.

haha. Or flip for them against someone else with cards of little to no value.

Baseball cards? Ha, ha...great investment. There is only a market for a few limited edition, great players cards which a very small market for them. The bottom end of the market (those random players worth $0.05/card) is total BS because there are no buyers for those pieces of paper. They are not worth the rent in a storage unit.

I had some old baseball cards but pretty much threw them away a while ago/gave them to some young relatives for fun.

Looking back on it, I wish I kept just the cards of my favorite teams/players who later joined my favorite teams. It's fun to look at them every once in a while. I also collected basketball cards since I liked that game more as a kid.

I would try to creatively group these cards into something meaningful (e.g. rookies, SF Giants, etc.) It's likely a lot more effort compared to what you'd get back, but IMO it might be your only shot to get rid of any of them.

I also think you'd be better off selling them at a garage sale or flea market for $5, no one will want to pay shipping.

The garage / yard sale isn't a bad idea. I haven't been to one since I was a kid and sold hot dogs and lemonade! If one comes up I'm going to seriously consider doing this. Just to "squeeze" some dollars out.

If not, to the goodwill they go!

What's FMV of 500,1000, or 2000 cards?

I'm sure I could google it, but I remember Googlin' FMV years back when I donated shirts, shoes, glasses, etc of items and it was so vague. lol. I spent hours taking pictures, bring it there, copying the goodwill receipts and I think it boosted my refund like $5, but made me feel all good inside.

I dumped off 40,000 sports cards and 1000 comics at a thrift store in SF and had them put $4000 on the receipt.

4k worth of donations? I wouldn't even know how to go about and put that on my taxes. The normal form (forget the name of it) only goes up too 500.

Edit: Oops GOOGLE IT!