Does anyone collect sports cards? I recently came into possession of thousands of different cards and I would like to know what I have. Some of them seem quite old and there are dozens of complete sets. Of course I am dreaming of having one that is extremely rare!

That is just what I was looking for! I tried google but was overwhelmed. Thank you so much Pete!

one area that can be quite helpful for instant results on what a card is worth or its rarity is to use eBay., Most often you'll find dozens of the same card you have for just a few bucks or more and therefore are not really worth anything at all.
If you don't find the card you have- you now have some ammunition to go hunting even further on some of the sports card websites and contact the administrator of that site and take your search even furthur ..
Good Luck!! .

( I always curse my mother for throwing out all my Baseball  cards from the 50's and 60's ) 

Thanks Terry.

You think your mom was bad...my dad threw out my entire comic books collection from the same years. I used to buy them as soon as they came out so I know that I had hundreds of first editions.

Or, even worse, the time an elderly friend of mine gave me her collection of Titanic and Lusitania memorabilia. I hung on to it for years and then ended up burning it all before moving. 

I used to collect baseball cards. I often would collect them in sets of two so that I could display one set in a book and keep another set in the box unopened since the unopened is worth far more. I had a few football and golf cards, but not many to even consider them part of a collection.


Like many things, sports cards are only as valuable as those who will buy them deem them to be. If you never plan to sell them then they really aren't worth anything. You will often get a more accurate price for a card if you go to a trade show where people who really know their stuff because they can look at many details of the card instead of just at a photograph.

Keep in mind, though, that collectors who are willing to pay top dollar for a card are extremely finicky. The more rare a card the more it is worth, sure, but since the majority of the cards you find won't be so rare, the quality means far more. Is the tip or the corner of a particular card ever so slightly bent and doesn't look crisp as if it came right out of the box (which can easily happen just by pulling a card out of the box and displaying it in a card folder)? You've just lost 10 to 30% of the cards value to a true collector. A light bend down the middle? Probably 80%.

At least that's how it was back in my days of collecting.