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06-18-2012, 10:46 PM
Looking for ideas to sell cards at a garage sale
I am having a garage sale in a few weeks and am wondering ways to sell my cards. Over the last year, I have filled 31 large flat rate box with commons. I am thinking about selling those for $2-$5 each just to get rid of them. I have 2 3,200 count boxes of commons that I used for my baseball camp a few weeks ago.
Here's how I did that: I put about 15 or so commons in a team bag and charged 25 cents apiece for them. The kids absolutely went crazy over them. I also had team bags with about 25 or so "better" cards, again all base, that I sold for $1 each. Those didn't move as well as the 4/$1 bags.
I was thinking about doing that as well. Don't think I am going to be pulling anything big out of the house to try and move in a garage sale. I don't think I can get what I want for them and they could possibly disappear if I wasn't paying attention.
Thinking about putting all my Cowboys and Rangers base extras into a notebook with 4/$1 on it. Would be nothing but base cards of current players, etc. like Kinsler, Young, Hamilton, etc. for Rangers and Romo, Witten, Austin for Cowboys.
Any other ideas on what might/might not work?
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06-18-2012, 11:13 PM
RE: Looking for ideas to sell cards at a garage sale
That sounds like a pretty good idea. The team bags or commons lots should work well at the prices you listed. The cheap stuff usually moves best at a garage sale. I tried selling some mid-range items ($10-$50) at my last garage sale and NONE of it sold. If you have any boxes of cards from the 80s or 90s that would normally sell for $5-$10 a box you can try selling the packs for anywhere between $0.25 and $1 and you may get a few sales that way too. I had a couple sealed boxes that a few people asked me if I would just sell a pack or two out of, but they didn't want to buy the whole box.
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06-18-2012, 11:31 PM
RE: Looking for ideas to sell cards at a garage sale
(06-18-2012, 11:13 PM)djohn Wrote: That sounds like a pretty good idea. The team bags or commons lots should work well at the prices you listed. The cheap stuff usually moves best at a garage sale. I tried selling some mid-range items ($10-$50) at my last garage sale and NONE of it sold. If you have any boxes of cards from the 80s or 90s that would normally sell for $5-$10 a box you can try selling the packs for anywhere between $0.25 and $1 and you may get a few sales that way too. I had a couple sealed boxes that a few people asked me if I would just sell a pack or two out of, but they didn't want to buy the whole box.
Yea, I am leaving anything that I would sell for more than $1 at the house. I tried that at one garage sell and nothing sold. Pulled all my nice stuff out and put prices and people were like I thought this was a garage sale. But those aren't garage sale prices. Those are BVs. So I decided I would not bring those out at a garage sale again. Like I said, I did the 4/$1 commons packs at my baseball camp a few weeks back and the kids went crazy. I will probably try that.
Most of my sealed boxes and sets are from 1987-1992. Nothing but junk really. I am thinking about putting those out on a table for $2 apiece (the sets). I have more than 60 sets from that era with lots of double and triple sets.
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06-18-2012, 11:32 PM
RE: Looking for ideas to sell cards at a garage sale
Sounds good, I need to do that next time I have one. I love going to yard sales and finding cards.
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06-19-2012, 10:31 AM
RE: Looking for ideas to sell cards at a garage sale
selling cards at yard sales are a mixed bag sometimes it works sometimes it dont had one a year or so ago and tried selling bags of commons 100 cards each bag for 7.00 then i knocked it down to 5.00 and they still didnt sell each bag prob had if i had to guess at least 30.00 bv maybe more but they still didnt sell at all
also dez bryant,any bama players in bama uni,john parker wilson,jered weaver,matt kemp,topps triple thread stuff,anthony rizzo
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06-19-2012, 11:50 AM
RE: Looking for ideas to sell cards at a garage sale
(06-19-2012, 10:31 AM)rascrush Wrote: selling cards at yard sales are a mixed bag sometimes it works sometimes it dont had one a year or so ago and tried selling bags of commons 100 cards each bag for 7.00 then i knocked it down to 5.00 and they still didnt sell each bag prob had if i had to guess at least 30.00 bv maybe more but they still didnt sell at all You have to go cheaper than that, especially for commons. A bag of 100 commons should be closer to $1 for a garage sale. The best bet is to go with smaller bags or lots (i.e. 10-25 cards for $0.25-$0.50). Selling items for under $1 is a huge draw at a garage sale. It might not seem like much, but if you sold 100 of the bags at $0.25 each you would make $25 on 1,000 or so common cards (which there is no way anyone would pay $25 for commons all at once). Typically the lots will sell to kids or parents who want to buy something cheap for their kids. You can even make it a little more enticing to buy more by making the lots $0.25 each, 5 for $1, and 12 for $2 or something along those lines. Just remember if your selling commons, they are probably cards you don't want anyways and would normally just be taking up space, so let them go cheap and hope that it helps spread the hobby love.
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06-19-2012, 01:02 PM
RE: Looking for ideas to sell cards at a garage sale
4 quarter bags sounds good to me! A garage sale is crap we don't want anymore anyways so sell cheap, clear up the clutter & make ya a little chi-ching while doing so.
PC=Giancarlo Stanton, Kemp, Longoria, Tulowitzki, Griffey Jr, Pujols, Jeter, Randy Johnson, Helton, Biggio, Bagwell, Chipper Jones, Votto..
I trade for similar cards.
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06-19-2012, 01:34 PM
RE: Looking for ideas to sell cards at a garage sale
Funny story -
I did this once a while back, I had several 5000 ct. boxes of commons. I went out and bought a stack of 400 ct. boxes..
I was selling them as a random (by sport) filled 400ct. boxes :
1 box - 3.50
2 boxes - 5.00
3 boxes - 7.00
5 boxes - 10.00
I had fair luck with it, mostly older people just buying a box of cards for thier kids/grandkids.
Well, I had a few kids come by and see the boxes. They rode off on thier bikes. A while later, they came back.... with a BECKETT GUIDE!!!!! They started opening all the boxes right in front of me and checking book values of the commons in the 400 ct. bulk boxes! Started wanting to "build thier own boxes", taking the better cards (I made sure each box had a few cards with "book value" a dollar or 2) and stuffing them all into one box together, and then wanting to only buy that box! I told them pretty much as soon as I saw this i was selling a box of commons for that price, and it wasn't a choose your own buffet... they were all like "Oh, we didn't know...." and just bought a bunch....
That worked well for me...
''I've never been in style, so I can never go out of style." - Lillian Gish ( 1
893 - 1993)
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06-19-2012, 10:12 PM
RE: Looking for ideas to sell cards at a garage sale
(06-18-2012, 11:32 PM)atteberry23 Wrote: Sounds good, I need to do that next time I have one. I love going to yard sales and finding cards.
same here.
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