[dandsbeck1]

When selling at a show or yard sale, how do you price your cards? Do you put all the same priced cards in the same box or do you price each one individually? Do you print out an inventory to allow folks to thumb through or do you just leave the boxes there to allow them to thumb through (or both)?

[grfyfan]

When I used to do Garage Sales I would leave the cards out for people to look at cause it is easier to see what you want that way. One of the nicest ways I saw cards priced at a show wasthe person had different colored stickers on the back of each toploader or sleeve and each color was for a different value for cards for like .25 .50 1.00 5.00 and then anything 10 and above was individually marked. I think that makes it easier for you and the buyer to know what they are spending

[sesfan01]

I like the concept of the different colored stickers having the coded prices. It makes it easier to keep track of purchase and sale amounts. I have seen vendors at the flea market set up their cards like that a few times.

[crazyforkinsler5]

I do the color-coded prices, but don't expect to move anything too high end because it's a yard sale.

I've set up at a yard sale a couple of times and often put in the paper that I have cards for sale at the yard sale. This is a few of the examples I've had of people coming to see my cards:

1.) Comes up to look and I have a few nicer cards out with prices on them. Person asks how low I'd be willing to go. I tell them and they say they can't pay that high. They figured they'd be a lot lower since this was a garage sale.

2.) Person flips through a few nicer cards and offers a price for the entire a bunch. I ask how he came up with that price and he said it's about 10-15% of what they're marked. He figured since it's a garage sale, they'd be moved for a lot cheaper.

Both of the previous examples then said (in some form): those are garage sale prices, those are card store and card show prices. Come on man, I thought this was a garage sale where you get stuff cheap.

3.) (and this pisses me off) I've had people come up and swap the penny sleeves they're in. I price the penny sleeves since I can just give them that instead of the entire top loader if they wish. They'll take a $5 card and put it in a 50 cent penny sleeve or take a card that's in a $1 notebook and say they got it out of a 20 cent notebook.

4.) (my wife did this once) Had a person come up to me when I had a notebook full of pages of certain players together. I had 50 cents apiece on the notebook. I had left to get breakfast at my wife's command and while gone, someone approached her and asked how much they were. Not knowing, she said that sheet of 9 cards is 50 cents. So, she sold about 10-12 pages of inserts from McGwire, Bonds, Bagwell, Ryan and others at 9 cards for 50 cents each. Nothing in the book had a BV less than $1, so that's why they were marked 50 cents apiece. I was very upset.

Since then, I only set out cards that I'm willing to move for 10 cents to $1.

My advice is just to be careful and don't get over-whelmed by tricksters. Make sure you keep all your high-end cards in a locked case and only show them when you're looking. I can afford to lose a couple of $1 cards, but not some that book at $25-$50 and so forth.

Good luck with your sales.