Buy/Sell/Trade Forum

I bought a 30k lot, mostly commons, mostly baseball. I had every intention of adding to the database as trade bait. But once you bring 30k cards in binders, monster boxes, shoe boxes etc into your home it gets a bit daunting. 

Thinking it might be easier to trim some of the fat before entering any cards. I already put some of the binders of basketball on eBay as low hanging fruit. For the guys with experience with this what is the best/easiest way? Team lots? medium flat rate mixed sports? medium flat rate by teams and/or sports..ugh I'm so lost. When I think I'm headed in the right direction I think of another way. Wife says I'm overthinking it and I believe her!

Also let me know if any interest in 2023 topps baseball cause I'm swimming in it!

I would be interested in some 2023 Topps. I collect just RC so if you have a bunch of duplicates maybe we can work something out. I did not add 2023 to my wantlist yet. I realized last year it is easier to just add all 2023s at one time when all the sets are out but I did pick up a large lot of 2023 bowman rcs from whatnot since they were a good deal. 

If you get to going through them, I’d be interested in taking a lot of Jim Abbott off your hands, also Scherzer and verlander.  Just a thought to throw at you. 

One of the ways I found works best for me is to separate all of a single set and then start picking users with the most cards of that set on their want list and I'll look for those with something I'd want back in return.  If I find someone with stuff I want, I'll go through adding the specific cards they are looking for.  Saves me the trouble of having to keep tons of doubles organized and it leads to very quick trades.  In a couple cases I had trade offers come in to me before I had the chance to make the trade offer to the person I was looking to trade with.

Doesn't really work with the users who collect specific players and may only have 2 or 3 cards from any single set on their want lists but in cases like that once you start weeding out a lot of the doubles, you can start listing what's left over in more manageable batches.

I'm in a similar boat with a huge amount of disorganized cards I purchased. I have been rethinking my strategy. I'm starting to believe I need to organize everything into something manageable before I even think of entering anything into the database. I want to get everything first separated by sport, then probably by year and then probably by set. With my work schedule I think it may be years before I get to entering everything in the database. My reasoning though is that once I get items separated into sport and year I can then pick and choose what I am focusing on. If I want to focus on football cards from 1993 I can grab that item and sort and organize and build a want list and for sale/trade for that grouping. If I don't get to 2019 baseball until the year 2026 so be it.

I bought a lot of 500K cards about 7 years ago..and then became overwhelmed about 1 month into sorting them. 

I think you need to decide are you keeping or selling?

I then break down by sport and manufacturer. and go from there. 

I havent found the magic formula for selling yet, even though I've solds tens of thousands of cards online mainly as sets or lots. By the time you sort, list, package, mail, unless you have some nice lots, it's almost not worth it. 

I'd almost go the FaceBook marketplace/Craigslist route first. 

30K you have it easy lol - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE3J-JUj3sE

Still looking for that magic formula like a Shazam for cards i feel it's getting close.

They have 1 for songs , for coins for pokemon cards and I think TCDB should be the 1's to be the leader in moving that along seeing as how we upload our images here.

I often purchase lots in the 10K-20K range. I go through one box or binder at a time. Keep what I want and then put the rest in my trading monster boxes. Once that box/binder is done I work on the next one. I still have a box of football from my last mega purchase that I haven't fully integrated in to my main FST. I have that seperated by manufacturer and set type....Panini has Contenders, Chronicles, etc. sub-sections. 

Just take your time with it. No need to be a rush.

Thanks for all the comments, I've tried multiple times to reply back individually but keep getting the "error blocked message". I will work on getting this lot organized for sure as step one! (bought 7 monster boxes and some sorting boxes) Thanks again for all the input.