When I first started collecting Magic the Gathering I used to joke with my wife that what I was really hoping for to jump start my collection was some poor kid’s mother getting pissed at her son who’s been collecting Magic for years and putting his entire magic collection online for like $10 or something ridiculous because mom has no idea what the value of the cards are. That probably makes me a horrible person, especially considering I was only “half” joking. And then, just this weekend, something very close to that really happened. Only this time it was NHL Hockey cards.
The Facebook Marketplace ad said this exactly:
“3 – 1 gal ziploc bags + large shoebox of hockey cards. Many in great shape, small number in fair to good. Kids didn’t want when they grew up. Am sure there are some gems in here, so a great activity for a collector or bored school kids to sort and see what you can find!”
Seeing the ad prompted me immediately buy the cards without even seeing them in person. All I had to go on was the picture above. My thinking was that for $15, even if all the cards sucked, I could hardly go wrong. But if I found a few gems, well then I’d be stoked! With that I practically ran to the car and drove 20 miles or so to North Seattle and pick them up.
Now just so you understand I’m not a total jerk, the mother explained to me that her sons were grown up (to me meaning they are now adults) and it sounded like they no longer lived with her. She explained that she had asked them first if they wanted their cards back and they said no (which means they had every chance to look for themselves again). In addition, she said their father was from Canada and used to collect cards. All of which suggested to me that those agreeing to sell the cards for $15 were at least vaguely aware of the potential that there were a couple cards worth more than that in the collection. In fact, the ad said they were sure there were some gems there. Honestly I expected that the cards were already picked over for the best singles worth anything but I was hopeful with that many cards just to break even.
So all weekend long now I’ve been sorting cards, estimating how many there are and trying to understand how to determine which set a card comes from so I can enter them into a tracking database and see what the estimated value of my purchase was. Here is what I’ve determined so far.
- It appears I have over 3,000 cards here
- The vast majority indeed are in good to very good shape.
- It takes a SHIT ton of time to sort through 3,000 plus cards when they are jumbled all together, upside down, forwards and backwards, with sets of all kinds randomly mixed together. Literally no organization at all.
- Depending on what metric you use I may have hundreds, or even thousands of dollars of value in these cards!
Now this last point I want to be very careful with. The value one places on a card various considerably. Just because a book says a card is worth something doesn’t mean an actual buyer is willing to pay that. Having said that, most valuation tools I have been researching try to use actual sales from sites like Ebay to tell you what “real buyers” are paying for the card based on actual sales. So far I’ve started using two different tools that have two very different things I like but it’s taking hours and hours to enter all the cards manually.
The results thus far are VERY encouraging. Based on actual “seen sales,” the value of just 600 of the cards I’ve entered into one database (trading card database or tcdb.com) is over $89. So with less than a fifth of the collection entered, that suggests my value on these cards, based on ACTUAL sales, will be in the hundreds of dollars! That’s awesome! The other tool I’m using (priceguide.cards) I’ve only managed to load in about 200 of the same 600 cards I’ve entered into the first database and it’s valuing my set at over $700 already. At that clip my set will be valued in the THOUSANDS, not hundreds.
Having said that, while the tools are MUCH prettier at priceguide.cards, there is a serious flaw in their valuations. There for example a card might sell for $1 on ebay and another time for $100 because the $1 card has an actual players autograph on it. The tool does not distinguish between the autographed card and the unautographed card because they are the same card number and thus in the datbase now the card has an average value of say $45 based on the average of the two prices but no one in their right mind is going to pay $45 for a $1 card. I’ve found this sort of false inflation happens a LOT on that site thus leading them to report that the average value in sales on my 200 cards right now is in the hundreds when in reality, without an autograph those cards are worth less than a buck.
TCDB.com also has it’s flaws. That site only lists values that other members have manually entered based on sales they have seen on Ebay. So, if a member doesn’t enter a value, there is no value auto calculated. No script is going out looking at Ebay sales and updating the prices. The only cards that have prices are cards members have actually sold and updated what they paid for it or got for it. The good news is that my collection is already worth over $89 bucks using that better method of valuation. Bottom line is, it looks like my $15 investment will pay off and give me much more value in trade value than I expected.