Buy/Sell/Trade Forum

My sister-in-law recently presented me with two monster boxes of mostly baseball cards from 86 through 93 that belonged to one of her sons (my nephew) who moved far away.  The cards are reasonably well cared for, which surprised me since he was a young kid when he bought them.  The majority of the cards are 88 Topps, 90 Topps, 91 Score, 92 Score, and 92 Fleer (several hundred of each).  There's a smattering of other cards from this era - 150+ 91 Fleer Ultra, 100 92 Upper Deck, etc.

I skimmed through the cards and they don't appear to be cherry picked (HOFs and stars all present), but neither are there any of the few nuggets from that era (Griffey UD rookie) that I found while skimming.  

I don't have a lot of dupes from that era because I bought mostly complete sets at the time or if I did have dupes, I either kept the HOF players and gave the rest to a local children's hospital.  So I have little modern day experience in dealing with cards of this era.

I broke the bad news to him that there's not much value in his childhood collection and advised him to keep the cards for the memories.  Two monster boxes don't take up that much space!

Problem is, I'm stuck with them and he's not sure he wants to pay the shipping for them.  Is this something folks on TCDB are genuinely interested in where it would be worth my time and effort to deal with?  I'm definitely not going to add these cards to my TCDB for sale/trade list.

I'd be interested in enough 92 Fleer to help finish my set, but anything I could offer in trade is from the same era, and none of it matches up with your wantlist 

I do add some to my FS/T list because, occasionally, someone will want some in a trade. All the extra extras get boxed up and when full I give them to several area organizations (USMC Toys For Tots, Goodwill, etc) who then give them to disadvantaged kids at Christmas time. And, believe it or not, these kids are absolutely ecstatic to get them. Having lived in several different foster homes growing up, I can vouch that anything at all that's toy and/or sports related can be a huge unexpected surprise to these kids...all a matter of perspective.

Mike, I'm hoping he will want me to ship them to him for his memories, but I can always give them away to the local children's hospital.  Back in the 80s and 90s I used to package them up as a variety pack of 25-30 cards in team set bags and always received great feedback from the hospital about them.  I'm just not sure they will take them anymore because of COVID.  But that is definitely an option - takes a lot of work, but I might not mind that at all.  I've never had to deal with 2 monster boxes before!

Great insights Mike. It really puts things in perspective. Thanks for sharing

I have a ton of these cards on my trade list and do pretty well with them. People want them. 

I've done a few trades where I jiat package up a bunch of junk wax of a team and trade it for a bunch of junk wax or cardinals stuff. It is a lot of fun to sort through dozens of cards and catalogue them, and that era has a lot of sentimental value to me and my dad, even if the cards themselves are worthless.

There has been a surge in interest in cards from the 80's and 90's lately and that started well before this pandemic. If he doesn't want the cards, it may be worth it to list them FS/T on here. You should be able to move plenty of them to set collectors and team/player collectors. It really just depends on how much work you are willing to do (listing and shipping) and how long you are willing to hold on to the ones that don't go out quick.

Now that i'm grown up i've been trying to hand build sets from Topps baseball 1985-today (85 being the first year i started collecting). I'm running into trouble with some of the rookies but it's fun re-discovering my interest in the hobby and the hunt for those few missing cards.  I'm always looking for lots like this.  however I'm not too keen on paying for shipping either...