I am not sure if it is still in business, but there was a place on Cherry Road in Rock Hill by the name of Grand Slam. The owner was a pretty fair guy when I used to go, hope this helps.

 

My understanding is that unless you have a good number of rare/valuable cards you are better off sticking em in a closet and keeping em for another couple of decades.

 

^^^This

If something stands out like Mickey Mantle or something, then take it in. Collector's World in Gastonia

 

My understanding is that unless you have a good number of rare/valuable cards you are better off sticking em in a closet and keeping em for another couple of decades.

I don't collect I have this box of cards from a lot of misc stuff that I picked up at auction so I have no idea whats in there cards from 70's forward. Very well may be worth nothing that is why I needed someone to look at it.

Thanks for all the tips.... may end up being closeted for the kids

 

Ball cards ....

My father was one of many in his generation that took many a Mickey Mantle ball card (among many others) and ran them through bicycle spokes or stuck them on a fence and shot them. He bought ball cards just for the gum and did who know what all with the cards. The gum now - that was valuable to those kids. These are not vague memories for people in that generation.

Now, back in the late 70's-80's, people from my father's generation found themselves with 10 year-old sons on their hands. And what did they do with/for those 10-year old boys? Why, they invested and bought ball cards! It's fun. And look what those Mickey Mantle cards are worth now? Maybe this Dan Marino card will be worth more in 10 years. Maybe this Michael Jordan card with feed my grandkids.

If my dad could have only found that one shoebox of cards that he had stashed away somewhere in his mother's house. He looked many times for it. But he swears that granny threw it out. Just threw it out.

Now, it turns out that almost every single penny that my father (and my brother and I) spent on ball cards is about the same. We were just throwing the money out. I got my ball cards out a couple years ago. Several boxes "worth." And that's about all they were worth was the space they were taking up. I sorted a bit, and I came up with some of the more collectible cards. I sold those for $40. The rest (read several thousands) I sold to some dupe in my office for $10.

If only I could have gotten the gum back at least from some of those Topps baseball packs. Now, that gum would have been worth it.

 

I don't collect I have this box of cards from a lot of misc stuff that I picked up at auction so I have no idea whats in there cards from 70's forward. Very well may be worth nothing that is why I needed someone to look at it.

Thanks for all the tips.... may end up being closeted for the kids

I still have ~60-75k cards, ~3k Jordan basketball cards, 7-8k Marino Football cards and even my collection is not worth that much. If you find notable names you can post them here with the brand/year. Pretty much all card dealers are tricky, they is a huge margin wholesale to retail and they get people constantly comming trying to sale cards (that they typically think are worth way more than ebay retail), and few buyers. There are not card dealers that work on small margins, they would be out of business if they did that. If you have rare valueable cards they are going to try to buy them pennies on the dollar. This is probably not the case, whatever you have is more likely to be worth very little.

 

In my very small experience, "collections" are worth less than parting out the big name cards...unless it's a whole collection (like the entire run of a particular series).

Every (and I mean EVERY) card dealer I've ever known of is a con artist. I realize they have to make a living and keep the lights on, but they will take you to the cleaners as a random Joe off the street who knows nothing about what you have. They'll offer a small amount and act like you've got nothing if you actually do have something in the pile of cards.

The problem with cards today is that everyone started to see these crazy prices for them in the 80's and they floored the throttle on production. that combined with no one using them for motorcycle sounds on their Huffy anymore just flooded the market with them. Instead of there being only a few tens of a card in existence, there were hundreds of thousands. For example, look at pretty much any complete Topps baseball set from the 80's. You can buy an entire set for like $5.

Today the golden ticket is the ultra-rare cards they stuff into the $10 packs of cards. Pieces of player's uniforms and autographs are the best examples. No longer is the average card worth a darn thing...even the rookie card of a phenomenal player, worthless to most people. The only thing it's good for is the kids who trade between each other.