General Forum

I've been getting bored lately while scrolling through eBay and found the classic lot section. Wondering if anyone has experiences with buying 2,500+ card lots. I'm the type that loves sorting through giant amounts of random cards from random sets. What would you guys think about buying a random lot of cards from an auction?

Been awhile but I have bought some decently sized collections on ebay.  Only had one that was lets just say packed with a great deal  apathy.  I would suggest making sure that packaging is such that any card damage will be limited.

I've only bought team specific lots.  But it's a lot of fun to sort through, as long as it's cheap enough.  I take the cards I need for my collection and then usually offer the dupes up for trade.  My only problem is a lot of times these lots aren't packaged all that well and many of the cards get damaged in transit.

Nothing as big as 2,500+ cards, maybe 800-1,000.  And they've never cost me more than 2½¢ a card. 

I've bought a few flat rate boxes from eBay and packaging is key. I look for tightly packed cards in the photos. I've seen pictures where the cards look thrown in and damaged before the box even ships. My most recent one was a large flat rate box of 2020 Topps. It was advertised as 5000 cards. I entered 5200 in TCDB and picked out another 100-150 that I couldn't trade. Overall I was happy enough but there will always be some damaged cards.

ive bought a few large lots in hopes of maybe the sellers didn't know what they were getting rid of, but they were all just commons and mostly cards not worth a dime.. but if you're a set collector or looking to build on something big,, then it maybe worth your while. 

I've never bought large lots from auctions on eBay, but I've had success at private/estate auctions. They typically will sell lots for pennies on the dollar. I also bought a large lot of cards from a private seller I connected with on FB. He sold me his entire collection, 6 large flat rate boxes, of cards which I estimate was around 25,000-30,000 cards for $600, plus the $20 per box to ship. The gem of the collection was a '93 Jeter SP that had been grade a 10 by PRO grading services. I asked him to send me photos of the better cards, which ultimately made me pull the trigger, and then I paid him half, he shipped half, then when I recieved the first shipment, I paid the rest and he shipped the rest, smooth transaction.  I've had a lot of fun searching, sorting, trading, selling, etc. Well worth the investment. 

Personally, I don't like buying lots, large or small, on eBay, even when they say guarenteed hit/relic/auto, because I fell that's how guys get rid of their junk, especiallly the guys who run breaks. They've sorted through it, pulled anything of value, and now are trying to recoup a few bucks, and by the time you spend $50 or $100, plus shipping, for 2500 base cards, it's not worth it to me. I'd rather use those funds to purchase something I actually collect. 

Just my 2 cents

This is what i'm mainly looking for so thank you for letting me know. My Favorite line from someone acting like they don't know what they are selling is "Medium flat rate box full of football cards  My wife says i need to make some room for her crap." Made me die laughing.

I have had my best luck hitting yard sales during warm months. Even if there are none available, I strike up a conversation, and usually somebody knows somebody that knows somebody. I have 3 Collections totalling around 60,000 Cards I purchased in 2019-2020. The highlights so far have been a Topps Jerry Rice RC, 3 Tim Duncan Topps RCs, 4 UD Collector's Choice Kobe Bryant RCs, a Topps Eddie Murray RC, and a Topps Derek Jeter RC. One of the Collections contained 5 Albums of nothing but Cal Ripken JR. With that purchase I got all 4 Ripken RCs...Topps Traded, Topps Orioles RC, Fleer, and Donruss along with probably around 3000 different Ripkens. A Complete 1990-91 Fleer Basketball Set and a Complete 1992-93 Fleer Ultra Basketball Set. I got a lot of early to late 70s Football also. Those are the highlights so far and I still have boxes I have not went through. I paid $400 for all 3 Collections. As I reflect on it, I think I lucked out. 

I've bought large lots five times. Only one time was I completely happy. The worst time was back in 2003 or 2004 and he neglected to mention that he smoked. I wasn't even able to actually even look at those cards- cigarette smell causes me to have difficulty breathing. I still have the boxes. I threw some dryer sheets in the boxes because I heard that would help, and then never touched them again...I used them as the basis for a wall to stack my model kits on. Have not opened since new. Hopefully they didn't water damage in any of the leaks I've had over the years but they were damaged badly anyway. That was $100 thrown away. Zero new cards added to my collection.

The first time was a nearly full 5000 count box of NASCAR cards from a dealer at a show. All the Dale Eanrhardt and Jeff Gordon cards were pulled out, and there was a lot of duplication. 8 to 10 copies of most cards. Most of the cards have surface scratches. This would have been around 2000. Don't know how many new cards I added to my collection, I didn't have those stats yet. 

In 2010 and 2011 my local NASCAR store closed and I ended up with every trading card in the store, some of which I paid for, some he just gave me. Most of them were in extremely poor condition. They were stored loose in a bucket and badly handled. I knew this going in though. It took three trips to get them all but I ended up adding about 3000 cards to my collection.  

I didn't do it again until 2018 when I bought a collection from Database member Sousafly. That is the only time I've been truly happy, the cards were in good condition, and there were a LOT of them- probably about 25,000 cards all told. I have not even opened all the boxes yet. A lot of them were duplicates to what I already had, but I will likely end up with about 5000 new cards. 

In February 2020 I went to a card show I bought a literal shoebox of cards. It had every sport in it, but I don't think anybody looked at it since 1997, the date of the newest card. The cards with UV coating had bricked, many had damaged corners, But it was only $20 and I got exactly 998 new cards from it so I'm not totally unhappy. I just finished scanning the 1993-94 Score American cards I got from it yesterday. They had no UV coating so only 2 out of like 200 were damaged bad enough I didn't scan them. 

Just last week I bought a 5000 count box of NASCAR cards from a guy in Quebec. He got them here super fast, but the condition isn't great. A lot of bad corners and surface scratches. Considering it cost me $195 with shipping, I'm very disappointed, even though I've gotten about 500 new cards and expect to have about 1000 new by time I finish, and have already completed 3 inserts and 1 Parallel set I've been chasing for 20 years, due to cost and condition this will always be a dissapointment. This was the most expensive of any of the lots above, which is why it's the most frustrating. If I had paid $20 or even $50 I wouldn't have been unhappy. 

I don't want to scare you off though. I've had great fun with repacks over the years- it's actually my second favorite way to add cards to my collection, roughly half of my NBA collection came to me from repacks. If you aren't a stickler for condition, it would be even more fun. Lots like this are pretty much a form of repacks.