You ever just throw away cards?

[ThePatriotWay]

I have been organizing my PC collection this past weekend, determining what cards that I still like and cards that I can let go. I have some new goals moving forward with collecting. A few years ago, I went through a phase of just collecting whoever was currently playing that given year. As a result, I ended up with a lot of bust players or people who just aren't in the league anymore. For example, guys like N'Keal Harry, Cam Newton, Damien Harris, Chase Winovich, Sony Michel, etc. The list goes on.

Outside of my PC collection, I probably have a few hundred base rookie cards from 2018 to 2022 ish. I also do not know what to do with these, I figure most of the cards are worth less than 50 cents. I can't decide if eBay or COMC is worth the hassle. Sometimes it's easier to just throw things away and take the L.

Should I toss up LOTS of players on eBay? Should I individually price cards out on COMC if I find any around $1.25-$2+ in value? Etc.

[JohnnyHatesJazz]

Yeah Patrick mahomes!

[patchgenie]

I've been keeping rookies and inserts. trying to toss the base cards.

[mfw13]

NEVER throw any cards away....donate to your local school or Boys/Girls Club....at the very least drop them off at the nearest Goodwill.

[epatmythes]

All. The. Time.

[Scottish Punk]

Yep, throwing away bunch over the past few months and more going forward. Will try some rookie player lots on eBay. Thousands of base are going in the recycle bin. Trying to git rid of all non PC stuff and reclaim my spare bedroom.

[49erRCCollector]

I give to goodwill. Never trash.

[duwal]

I have in the past but now I check and cards that are sold for less than $1 on COMC I simply put them in plastic bags and drop off to Goodwill

[auctionjmm]

Donating seems insulting to me. When I get to a point where I'm ready to toss cards, I've already picked out the stars, rookies, retired players, etc. There is nothing of interest left. Even as a child, I had no interest in commons of bench players. I don't want to donate something to children that I myself would have thought was lame.

That being said, I've found that junk cards are great for protection during shipments. I will put 5-6 cards on either side of the team bag so I rarely throw out cards anymore as they will get recycled in shipping.

[Scottish Punk]

Originally Posted by auctionjmm

Donating seems insulting to me. When I get to a point where I'm ready to toss cards, I've already picked out the stars, rookies, retired players, etc. There is nothing of interest left. Even as a child, I had no interest in commons of bench players. I don't want to donate something to children that I myself would have thought was lame.

That is my line of thinking. I am just giving somebody else a pile of stuff that will just sit on their shelf wasting space/effort/etc. An example, 300-400 2018-2020 bowman draft cards of players who never made it to pros. Or for football, donruss base of non vet stars. All these cards aren't even worth the .50 cent processing fee on COMC and cost more to ship as a lot than they are worth.

[Chrominator]

Originally Posted by Scottish Punk

That is my line of thinking. I am just giving somebody else a pile of stuff that will just sit on their shelf wasting space/effort/etc. An example, 300-400 2018-2020 bowman draft cards of players who never made it to pros. Or for football, donruss base of non vet stars. All these cards aren't even worth the .50 cent processing fee on COMC and cost more to ship as a lot than they are worth.

It costs 50 cents per card submitted?!?!

[Slette]

Whenever I find myself accumulating a bunch of bulk base or inserts with little value, I throw them up on Facebook Marketplace for $5-10 and give the cash to my daughters to throw in their piggy banks. I clear out room and teach them about savings. In one instance, I actually made a connection with a local collector who had a card I had been trying to track down for a while, so that more than paid off for me.

As long as the cards are in good shape (and it helps if there are a lot of them), you should always be able to get *something* for them.

[Jaysabz]

Originally Posted by Chrominator

It costs 50 cents per card submitted?!?!

I actually just went to check - I have an account w/ a decent chunk of change on there, but back when I was using it more heavily (3-4 years ago) it was 25 cents a card.

Looked today and the lowest card tier level is 65 cents!!

I'm guessing COMC became tired of being a repository of bulk junk sub-$1 cards.

65 cents is severe. At 25 cents, anything worth 50 cents or more was viable.

They also house all of the Upper Deck ePack stuff if people choose to transfer to them, so they have literally 100s of thousands of cards worth 25 cents or less just sitting in their warehouses.

But that's quite the jump - 25 cents to 65 cents, and turnaround time is 16 weeks on that 65 cent tier. I feel like it used to be 60-90 days back when I was submitting but who knows.

Fortunately, I got out of the hobby (but for my singles purchasing) just as everything started going bonkers.

[ThePatriotWay]

Originally Posted by Scottish Punk

That is my line of thinking. I am just giving somebody else a pile of stuff that will just sit on their shelf wasting space/effort/etc. An example, 300-400 2018-2020 bowman draft cards of players who never made it to pros. Or for football, donruss base of non vet stars. All these cards aren't even worth the .50 cent processing fee on COMC and cost more to ship as a lot than they are worth.

It has been a few years since I was on COMC (I also left the hobby), I thought the cost to list a card on their site was around $1 per card now? I took a quick glance at some of these base rookies last night, most of them were barely worth 0.12 cents according to existing listings on COMC. I also agree with the donation thing, a lot of people frown upon throwing stuff away in this hobby but we gotta admit that junk is junk. I did find a few recognizable names, but even those were junk on price.

[Jaysabz]

Originally Posted by ThePatriotWay

It has been a few years since I was on COMC, I thought the cost to list a card on their site was around $1 per card now? I took a quick glance at some of these base rookies last night, most of them were barely worth 0.12 cents according to existing listings on COMC. I also agree with the donation thing, a lot of people frown upon throwing stuff away in this hobby but we gotta admit that junk is junk. I did find a few recognizable names, but even those were junk on price.

Looking now. There's three tiers for trading cards:

Elite - 2 week turnaround - $2 per card - trading cards worth more than $50, no card minimum

Select - 4 week turnaround - $1 per card - trading cards less than $50, no card minimum

Standard - 16 week turnaround - $0.65 per card - trading cards less than $50, 100 card minimum

There are discounts of up to 50% for trading cards sent w/in 90 days of their hobby release, and a $0.50 surcharge for graded cards or cards encased by the manufacturer.

[ThePatriotWay]

Originally Posted by patchgenie

I've been keeping rookies and inserts. trying to toss the base cards.

That’s how I ended up with ~400-800+ cards of base rookies,
I was sleeving every single rookie when I entered the hobby years ago. It turns out, nobody actually cares unless we’re talking about an on card patch auto hit or something. Everything else seems worthless.

[bamafan3559]

Vet base usually gets tossed unless it's a star. Guys that flamed out in a year or two get tossed for me as well. I do keep all numbered stuff though.

[Scottish Punk]

Originally Posted by Jaysabz

Looking now. There's three tiers for trading cards:

Elite - 2 week turnaround - $2 per card - trading cards worth more than $50, no card minimum

Select - 4 week turnaround - $1 per card - trading cards less than $50, no card minimum

Standard - 16 week turnaround - $0.65 per card - trading cards less than $50, 100 card minimum

There are discounts of up to 50% for trading cards sent w/in 90 days of their hobby release, and a $0.50 surcharge for graded cards or cards encased by the manufacturer.

They recently raised the minimum price. I used to send in all parallels of prizm/chrome. With the raised prices, even those of general vets aren't worth sending in. A lot of those will end up selling for .40-.60. Yes, they take forever to get all logged in. If you send in 400 cards, you will get like 20 a week for months at a time before they are all uploaded. There is just so many parallels and print runs now that the site just gets filled with base vets parallels. Set collectors are few, so those don't get scooped up.

[Jaysabz]

Originally Posted by Scottish Punk

They recently raised the minimum price. I used to send in all parallels of prizm/chrome. With the raised prices, even those of general vets aren't worth sending in. A lot of those will end up selling for .40-.60. Yes, they take forever to get all logged in. If you send in 400 cards, you will get like 20 a week for months at a time before they are all uploaded. There is just so many parallels and print runs now that the site just gets filled with base vets parallels. Set collectors are few, so those don't get scooped up.

Yeah I don't blame them for raising the price.

They only have so much space to warehouse all that stuff - they already have to take the ePack cards that get transferred over and get listed for a penny.

[49erRCCollector]

Originally Posted by auctionjmm

Donating seems insulting to me. When I get to a point where I'm ready to toss cards, I've already picked out the stars, rookies, retired players, etc. There is nothing of interest left. Even as a child, I had no interest in commons of bench players. I don't want to donate something to children that I myself would have thought was lame.

That being said, I've found that junk cards are great for protection during shipments. I will put 5-6 cards on either side of the team bag so I rarely throw out cards anymore as they will get recycled in shipping.

At the prices packs/boxes of cards are now a kid stumbling on a box of cards at goodwill and pulling players for his/her favorite team is not terrible.

[duwal]

Originally Posted by auctionjmm

Donating seems insulting to me. When I get to a point where I'm ready to toss cards, I've already picked out the stars, rookies, retired players, etc. There is nothing of interest left. Even as a child, I had no interest in commons of bench players. I don't want to donate something to children that I myself would have thought was lame.

But that doesn't mean it is that way for others. I started both my hockey and baseball collections with collecting common cards of Donald Brashear and Brett Butler. Who knows if that batch of cards someone got, even if it might be low valued, could get them more into collecting inexpensively. Or if they have a different plan like using those cards to get signed TTM.

[Jaysabz]

Originally Posted by 49erRCCollector

At the prices packs/boxes of cards are now a kid stumbling on a box of cards at goodwill and pulling players for his/her favorite team is not terrible.

I'm fortunate in that I don't know what it's like to have little to nothing.

My parents weren't wealthy, but as a kid I got toys on my birthday and Santa always came...

I'd imagine that a kid who had next to nothing would treasure a stack of sports or non-sports cards, no matter how relevant the players or subject matter.

[Siberian13]

I collect Falcons. So I probably should

[ThePatriotWay]

Originally Posted by Siberian13

I collect Falcons. So I probably should

For every 28 cards toss out 3, good way to get organized.

[49erRCCollector]

Originally Posted by Jaysabz

I'm fortunate in that I don't know what it's like to have little to nothing.

My parents weren't wealthy, but as a kid I got toys on my birthday and Santa always came...

I'd imagine that a kid who had next to nothing would treasure a stack of sports or non-sports cards, no matter how relevant the players or subject matter.

I've lived both. There was a time when I was very young when my parents had to borrow money from our minister to make rent.

By the time I graduated high school, my father was quite successful.

I live incredibly modestly but have a good situation for my self at 50 years old.

But common comics and cards were GOLD to me a child. I had a lot of early 80s baseball, mostly received for free, and I'd pour over the players and stats of even obscure players.

Kids don't need "hits" - they need cards. Hence Goodwill.