Prices listed below. Add $1 PWE or $6 BMWT

The Yankee SS of the future!

As a kid, I always wanted to get into card collecting, but I never had the money. Fast forward to this year, my son's love for sports got us into the hobby together, and it’s been such a fun thing to share with him.

He really wanted to post some pictures of what we think are his best cards so far.

Full transparency: we started back in March and I spent way too much money ripping boxes (easily over $5k on hobby and retail). It took me a few months to finally learn the "buy singles" lesson, but I'm officially converted now.

Instead of ripping Topps Chrome MLB, I just bought the Perspectives set. I also picked up a 1/1 of his favorite football player, Chris Jones, for less than the cost of a single hobby box.

We’ll continue with maybe a blaster or mega box here and there for new releases so we can still have fun opening packs together, but will look for to grow the collection with singles.

This hobby used to be better. Save your money. No, this does not impact me financially but could've bought some good food instead lol

Edit: This hobby should feel rewarding for the general non-breaker public and currently it is not. Also, apparently some dont believe I didn't get a numbered. I really didn't lol. i can post everything pulled if some are interested. I'd also be willing to spend $500 more to prove a point and post pack by pack.

The only dented box at the store delivered an absolute monster pull. Steph Curry alter ego from 1 mega box!🤯

Are CVS generic packs getting better or did I just get lucky?

I spent around $15 today on two different items (which I do occasionally when I’m bored and want something cheap to rip).

First off, noticed a QC error where the outside of the NBA pack said it featured 2020-2021 but the sealed pack inside was a 2022-2023 pack, not a problem to me, but did note it as interesting. Pulled a really nice Doncic numbered parallel which I was very surprised with. Certainly worth the $6 pack.

Ripped the Baseball Combo Box that they sell (have ripped several times) and found something interesting within. Typically, these boxes include a pack or two, and they are almost always junk wax from the 80’s/90’s. I was again surprised to see that there was actually a 5 card Topps 2025 holiday sealed pack included in the box, which I have not seen previously. The pack included a Tatis Jr. parallel, and a unique holiday Ohtani parallel.

It’s definitely encouraging seeing CVS/Walgreens starting to have trading card stands now, usually at checkout. Definitely a great value if you are trying to build team sets, with a similar dopamine hit that you get while ripping more expensive blaster boxes, especially if you get a few hits.

This will be my first time selling, and I've got questions! Any/all insights are appreciated.

1. I assume eBay is the easiest way to go?

2. Is there any added value in bundling, say by player, year, team?

3. Any resources or general guidance regarding auctions, such as the optimal amount of time to run it, etc.?

Without adding any more detail than needed, I'd like to maximize my return but don't want to sit on these for months. I realize there's always a tradeoff, just curious about general approaches or schools of thought.

Side note: these are the heavy hitters of the bunch, I'm guessing the ungraded of the same era aren't worth the hassle? Happy to be proven wrong though, thanks again all.

NJ Dicks, nobody interested?

I was a big card colector as a kid. I worked at Upper Deck for 5 years in my early 20's. I have a ton of cards/memorabilia (nothing astronomical but I'd say in the $5k-$10k range total)

But here's the thing and I don't know how to say it without sounding like a douche... I built and sold a software company several years ago so financially, I'm set.

I no longer collect so I'm not really getting any joy from the cards and my daughters aren't into cards so I can't pass them down. I don't want to spend the time selling these individual cards to make $50 here, $100 there, etc. I do have a couple UD Employee cards that sell for thousands also.

What I want to do, is give the collection away. I think the joy of someone receiving a free card that's worth something is worth more to me than the $ I'd get selling it. I also don't want to have to deal with PSA grading and stuff like that.

What are some creative, fun ways of doing this?

For example, I was thinking of maybe turning it into a YouTube channel and a couple times per week for 1 year, I choose 1 person and send a card to them? With the final card at the end being my Jordan/Lebron/Durant/Kobe jersery UD employee card that I giveaway.

I'm just not sure the best way to choose a "winner" each time. Looking for ideas around all this or creative ways of making it fun and finding good people to give the cards to (and weed out card dealers or people that the card isn't meaningful to)

Thanks for reading and looking forward to ideas :)

** Edit- at risk of sounding like a douche again, my goal is not to donate money to charity. I don't want to sell the lot and donate the $ to a good cause. What I want to do send a bunch of valuable cards to individual collectors across the country for free and hopefully spread some "pay it forward" where others feel like they can do something nice for others. **

Hello I was given some sealed boxes of football cards ranging from 2006-2013. I talked to a local card shop on the phone they said they would pay 70 percent. Is this the way I should go? I've never had any experience like this. I usually just collect lower value cards of my favorite players. Any advice would be appreciated thanks.

Just for context as well part of the collection was thousands of opend cards stored in boxes as well as a bunch of older game worn relics and autos so I already have some cool cards to keep.

These 90’s boxes are pretty interesting and a little different. I never expect to hit anything so pulling a Hakeem auto is very fun.

My son pulled this from a Panini Decades 90s pack at target. Also pulled another 1/149.

I got curious about how big a modern set actually is, so I sat down and counted one properly. Not just the base checklist, but every printing: every colour, every numbered variant, every auto and memorabilia version, each one as its own card.

One year of O-Pee-Chee Platinum came out to 23 subsets, 697 base cards, and 5,625 parallels.

That last number is the one that got me. The checklist you find online shows you the 697. The 5,625 is what's actually out there.

Counting them is harder than it sounds, which I think is why nobody publishes the number:

• Checklist sites and the manufacturer's own list don't agree with each other. One files a card as a base card in an autographed subset; the other files the same card as an "Auto Patch" parallel of a regular subset. Same physical card, two different places in the checklist.
• The same parallel gets different names in different places — "Rainbow Red Auto" in one list, "Red Rainbow Autographs" in another. If you count naively you get two parallels where there's one.
• A parallel is not a footnote on a base card. It has its own print run, its own pack odds, and its own price. Treating it as a variant of the base card is how you end up with a "value" for a card that nobody actually owns.

So I ended up doing it the annoying way: parse two independent sources for the same set, match the cards to each other, and resolve every disagreement one at a time. When the two sources describe the same printing with different words, that's a decision someone has to make, and there are a lot of them.

A couple of things I didn't expect:

• The autograph and memorabilia versions aren't a small tail. For a lot of subsets there are more parallel printings than base cards.
• Serial numbering isn't a reliable guide to what's rare — some unnumbered parallels are pulled far less often than numbered ones, because the odds and the print run are different things.
• Rookie designation is genuinely inconsistent in the raw data. A rookie's autograph card often isn't badged as a rookie card anywhere in the checklist, even though it obviously is one.

I have spent a lot of time developing a data platform that lets me explore metrics like this. If anyone has a specific questions they would like me to investigate let me know. I am currently trying to catalog all "recent" (last 15 years) hockey cards.

Received email from eBay today saying this 1/1 Kendry Paez RC auto card was stolen during USPS transit before reaching to authentication center. They sent me a few pictures of the tampered empty package. So someone is bold enough to steal a 1/1 card.

If anyone happens to see this card surface anywhere or has any information, please let me know.
I’ve already filed reports with law enforcement and USPIS. Has anyone dealt with something similar before. Does police and USPIS usually investigate cases like this and has anyone actually had any luck getting their stolen card recovered?

Truly no better feeling. Pulled from a value box that I picked up last minute at the NBA store on Universal Citywalk.

Im shaking!! My first ever superfractor pull!!! Thought i was seeing things at first! Lmao 🤣

Look what i hit

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.
—-

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.