86-91 baseball cards worth anything?

[JimKiler]

Likewise. I'm sitting on about 5-6 complete sets of '82-84 Topps, '84 Donruss (the shiz back in the day of collecting) and other assorted sets from that era.

The book value/Ebay sale prices are pathetic, and I feel like my 'investment' at my young age of 12-15 at that time, and ALL THOSE YARDS I MOWED just to go get another pack at the store ...

:'(

That sucks, those early 80's cards were not nearly as overproduced and had a big value back in the late 80's.

 

[Homerboy]

*my son did get 1 great hit -- Puig Rookie Sepia Auto X-Fractor redemption card (Topps offers redemption cards where you mail it in then they mail you the card... problem is they seldom honor those redemption cards... it's flat out robbery, but they get away with it.

My son sold the redemption card on eBay for $270.
This came out of a box of cards that cost $100... so the net profit isn't that great.

 

[BrokenVisage]

I had some great hockey cards that are now pretty much worthless, fucking NHL, but many of my old Magic cards quadrupled in valued!

 

[BurnItDwn]

These cards are not worth anything. Maybe in another 20-30 years some of them will be valuable if enough people damage or throw away their cards.

 

[SP33Demon]

I used to collect cards when I was younger (early 90s) and I've following the hobby on a off since just out of curiosity.

The card industry has changed a lot. People are beginning to realize that sports cards were just pieces of paper with some guys name on them, so their value is usually nil (unless we're talking older pre 1970 cards).

The card industry has gotten around this by vastly increasing the amount of autographed cards and now they're also doing "game used" cards by including small swatches of jerseys and other equipment on the actual card. This at least gives the card some hard value.

Card sets have gone really high end too. Some companies are producing packs of cards with only autos in them (you get like 5 cards per pack, all of them guaranteed to be either autographs or game used swatches), selling them for $50+ a pack. You can even score super rare autographs by old time players. Card companies will buy old autographs (like on old personal checks or documents), then cut them out and put them on a new card:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Jackie-Robi...1248447586?pt=US_Baseball&hash=item19e6ec9862

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1997-98-UPP...97001657?pt=US_Basketball&hash=item4d16eb4eb9

Pretty much if you don't have an Auto or GU (Game used) card, you have a piece of cardboard.

Sucks that they're actually destroying an actual game used Jordan jersey to put a piece of it on a piece of cardboard. Corporations have figured out that they can buy the jersey for 50K and then cut it into 100 pieces worth $1,000 apiece and use that as a low probability lottery carrot on a stick. People need to stop buying this shit.

 

[smackababy]

Sucks that they're actually destroying an actual game used Jordan jersey to put a piece of it on a piece of cardboard. Corporations have figured out that they can buy the jersey for 50K and then cut it into 100 pieces worth $1,000 apiece and use that as a low probability lottery carrot on a stick. People need to stop buying this shit.

Don't worry, nobody destroyed the Flu Game shoes. They sold at auction last month for over $100k. Some lucky ball boy got them for giving Jordan some jello (or yogurt or some shit) in Utah and asked for them before the game. Jordan, being the nice guy he is, gave them to him after the game.

Sad I couldn't afford it. All I got are some OG Flu Games released then.


After I hit post, I remember it was applesauce Jordan ate before games, not jello.

 

[Scarpozzi]

It was fun collecting cards. There was actually a trading card store near the baseball fiedls I played little league at growing up....so we frequently visited the store to stock up. Over the years I've noticed the presence of trading card shows at the local malls to be nonexistant now. You just don't see anyone wasting money on new baseball cards as often unless they are pure fans of the sport/players.

It was fun buying packs of cards hoping for rookies or stars and trading cards with friends.

 

[Slew Foot]

Ill elaborate a bit more, I own a trading card distributorship that I operate in my spare time(easy money little work).

Anyway, like most I collected in the 80s and 90s. Packs were cheap and my friends and I would try and collect our favorite players and teams and try and trade the rest. Cards back then were massively produced, estimates are that are 4,000,000 copies of every 1998 Topps card! Even the "rare" 1989 UD Griffey and 1990 Frank Thomas are thought to have a million copies. As is such, not much from that era is worth alot save for the very rare errors or certain local issues. The exception are some Basketball cards, namely MIchael Jordan inserts which still ell for decent coin.

As it stands now,, the hobby is not targeted towards little kids, its more for the middle aged man who likely collected in his youth and now has a bunch of cash and higher ends tastes and is aiming for some childhood nostalgia. While its still about collecting, theres also more of a lottery feel to it with packs and boxes selling for up over $1000 a pop. Thats not a common scenario, most stuff is still under $10, but the more money you have, the more opportunities you have to spend.

In the last few years, big buyers from China have come into Basketball and are dropping some serious coin on cards, some of my sales from the past year:

$4500

$4500

$4000

$2200

$2000

$1500

So yeah, its not really the same hobby as it used to be when you picked up a bunch of cheap stuff at the drug store and stuck it in your bike tires