The Great, Cheap Ebay Lot Pt. 1

I think I just struck Gold.  Not Topps Gold, but better.  Even better than Topps Black Gold!

About two weeks ago, I won a big lot on ebay.  Here’s the picture and description:

That's a lot of Pro Set in there...I'm in!

You are bidding on a large collection of football and baseball cards shown in the picture. The cards are in their orignal wax pack boxes (all packs are opened) and sets are broken. I am looking to move this collection to clear space in my apartment, not looking to make a killing just looking for fair value. The collections do contain a ton of stars and hall of famers. There are some inserts as well. I am also including a binder of cards from the late 80s early 90s (basketball, baseball, and football). Mayo cutplug football cards are included. Also, am including a handfull of screw hard cases in their original packaging.

I will have to ship this in 2-3 boxes because of the size. Thanks for looking. Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks.

RELIST BONUS!!: I am also throwing in 4-5 boxes of 2008 Allen and Ginter cards. This includes a near complete base set (a few common players are missing) and a complete State set. Also am throwing in some inserts, patch cards, and autos. This is a great collection to get started with!

Yes, this sucker was relisted.  I know it’s not an amazing lot, but the football have to be worth a couple bucks, right?  How did someone not take it off his hands?

Shipping initially seemed steep at $18.99, so I didn’t want to pay much more overall and bid low.  My winning bid:  $10.50.  I figured the hard cases are worth that by themselves.  I’m sure there’s at least $20 of value to be found elsewhere.  Let’s see how right I am.

I haven’t finished going through the lot, so I’m going to break this into parts.  First up, the sets.  You can kind of see it in the picture above, but here’s a better one.

Time to play the $10.50 Pyramid!

What we have here is:
(1) 1989 Topps Traded Football
(6) 1986 Topps Traded Baseball
(8) 2000 Topps Chrome Traded and Rookies Baseball

Sounds pretty good, right?  Sure, until you realize all are opened and ALL are missing some of the key guys.  Obviously this guy bought them to flip (maybe even grade and flip) the major RCs, but some of the cards he omitted from this process are a little baffling.

1989 Football
Missing: Barry Sanders RC
Includes: Every other card such as RCs of Troy Aikman, Deion Sanders, and Andre Rison.

Unless this was done right away, you can assume that Aikman was a star player and should have been flipped.  Sanders made a big splash for a while too.  Rison may not have been worth the hassle, I guess.

1986 Baseball
Missing: Bo Jackson, Will Clark, Jose Canseco, Barry Bonds
Includes: XRCs of Bobby Bonilla, Andres Galarraga, Wally Joyner, and of course Bip Roberts

Can’t say the guy left too many superstars on the table for me in this one.  I know I have the full Traded set bought by my dad upon release, so I’m not sweating it anyway.

2000 Chrome
Missing: Ben Sheets, Carlos Zambrano, Miguel Cabrera (graded cards sell for about $70-90), Barry Zito
Includes: Brandon Phillips, Brandon Inge, Francisco Rodriguez, Adrian Gonzalez, Adam Wainwright, and Michael Young
Also Included: Will Clark, Jose Canseco, Wally Joyner.  What, 14 years later in their careers their Traded cards aren’t worth pulling?  Yeah, you’re right.

According to Beckett.com, these carried a SRP of $99.99 each!!  I can only assume this guy got them much cheaper just to pull key rookies out for sale (like the rest so far). If he bought them new, I feel sorry for the guy.

So, I may not have 8 Miguel Cabreras to use to make money hand over Drunken Fist (allegedly), but I say I got my money’s worth just from these partial traded sets.

What good are partially complete traded sets missing the key players?  Well, as the saying goes, let’s make some fucking lemonade!

1986 is a lost cause. The only cards missing are the ones listed above, so if anyone has desire for the rest of the checklist, I’ll be happy to trade them away!  The Aikman I might be able to sell off for a couple bucks (or trade if there are any takers).  The real chance to not only recoup my investment but make a decent sized profit is in the Chrome sets with those A-Gon’s and Youngs.

I’m going to use this opportunity to do something I’ve never done before.  I’m going to get cards graded.  I think I’ll throw in some of those Wainwrights while we’re at it, too.  Maybe one Phillips, a K-Rod and an Inge for curiosity.  Those Adrians and Youngs can possibly go for $20 each or more and although I haven’t looked at all of my copies of those cards, the couple I have looked at seem to be worth at least a 9 in my completely inexperienced opinion.

I’ll save my thoughts on grading/graded cards for when I actually go through the process, but for now, if any of you have any preference of companies or experience with sending cards off to be graded, I’d love to hear about it!

For the rest of you that are like me that have never done something like this before, I’ll outline everything I do on here and you can watch safely on the sidelines as I attempt the daring magic trick of  turning Chrome into Gold!

6 comments to The Great, Cheap Ebay Lot Pt. 1

Leave a Reply to Community Gum » The Great, Cheap Ebay Lot Pt. 2 Cancel reply

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>