General Forum

Hello everyone, my name is Jay and I am just returning to the site after a 3 year hiatus due to a few moves and my cards being kept in a storage unit (climate controlled of coarse).

While I used the site to log my own collection, I had just started understanding the trade by mail thing and had completed my first one but life happens and I had to stop updating and using. Now that I'm updating again, I want to get more out of the knowledge and expertise of this diverse community, so I have a few questions that hopefully someone can help me with. I figured this best fit under "general" as it relates to a few different items. 

1. How do I take a low res photo of a card? When I try to use my iPhone camera and upload it, I get a message saying I need to take a lower res image. I have quite a few that I want to add that currently have no image listed.

2. A few years before I found this site, we had a pipe bust in our house and while we were all at work and when I returned home 8 hours later, the boxes holding my baseball, football and basketball cards from 1977 - 1983 had fallen off one of the shelves and onto the floor....needless to say I cried because those were all my original cards from my first years of collecting when I was 8-12 years old. My real question is, how do I attempt to replace these cards in the most cost effective (cheap) way? While my financial situation has thankfully allowed me to get house and get my cards out of storage, I don't have the finances sitting around to really put them back together again...for example, I haven't purchased a set or pack of cards since 2018, and I've always bought at least a few packs per year. Any ideas would be much appreciated!

3. To grade or not to grade? When I looked into grading about 5 years ago it was just too pricy per card to even consider. What would the most important advantages be of getting a card graded? (a Kobe Topps rookie for example)

4. I was thinking about buying a pack of cards the other day, getting the itch after pulling all my cards out again and returning to this site, so I happens to be in Walmart and then drive to Target across the street....where have all the sports cards gone from retail stores? They weren't just sold out, they didn't have a section for them anymore...have I missed something? Where do you all buy your packs these days? 

Thank you for anything you may have insight on in helping me with my random questions. I have a few cards that I also have questions about and will post those in the appropriate forum tomorrow. I'm glad to be back and updating again and look forward to hopefully getting back to trading and engaging more soon. 

- Jay 

In response to Question # 1. You can't use photos as images. They must be scanned.

#1 - As AnalogKid said, photos aren't allowed on the site anyway, so figuring out how to reduce the resolution of your phone's camera won't help.

#4 - The big retailers have had problems with sports cards for years. Personally, I wouldn't buy cards there because, for a long time, they allowed returns of unopened packs. The result is a lot of people mining for inserts and then returning packs unlikely to contain them.   Let's say I have a card release (10 packs/box) that averages 2 memorabilia cards per box. I buy several boxes. I start opening the packs and find 2 memorabilia cards in the first 6 packs. Iy's likely the last 4 have none, so I put those packs aside. I repeat the process for boxes 2 and 3. When I'm done, I have 11 packs that I'm resonably sure don't have a memorabilia card in them, so I stick them all in one of the boxes and return tehm to the store.  Now the store has a box of cards, but it likely has NO memorabilia inserts, significantly lowering the value.

Covid also got involved. People would find out when the card deliveries arrived at the store and would show up waiting for them to be stocked. Target suspended sports trading cards in store officially to keep people from congregating and risking covid transmission.

Regarding Question #1, photos are permitted to be uploaded to:

1. the "Packaging" area of the various sets
2. TCDb's Card Identification Forum
3. your collection. According to the TCDb FAQ, "If you are using the site to track your collection, you can submit images of your cards into your collection. Photographed images are fine in that case."

But the FAQ also states "For images of cards that are added to the general site, photographs are not accepted. This is to maintain an even quality in the images. Some of the problems with photographed cards are image skewing because of the lens angle and lighting irregularities because of the flash or ambiance." This is what AnalogKid was referring to.

I gather from your question #1 that you are trying to upload photos (using your iPhone) to the general site. Only scans from a scanner are permitted to be uploaded to the general site.

For question #2, you might try Facebook to see if someone local to you is selling their collection or at least a large lot of what you are looking for. Sorry about what happened to your original cards.

Question #3--grading is pretty much a personal preference. I've only ever graded one of my cards and I'm glad I did. It was a total fluke that I bought a UD Ruth relic for $5 at the local flea market (not really knowing it's worth since I don't really collect UD). I had it graded and it came back BGS 9.5. An identical graded card recently sold on ebay for $8k.

Question #4--here's an old TCDb forum thread that may answer that question. Many people now buy their cards online. Search the TCDb forums for more info.

1. Hit on well here. Scan it

2. Either trade for cards and slowely build or check fb marketplace/craigslist. Best two places I have found to buy collections and hope you hit rich.

3. Grading is still expensive, just went up acrossed the board and levels were closed down.Bbut to decide what you want to grade check comps on eBay and see if it is worth it. Everyone grades for their own reasons and currently I am not grading.

4. Restock days are typically Friday or Tuesday from what I have seen/heard.

Walmarts don't restock on consistent days across the country.  Cards are stocked and managed by 3rd party distributors in store, not by Walmart, so the restock day is up to their schedules.

Target right now is the easiest place to find cards online, at least for Baseball and the low end sets in other sports (Contenders Basketball, college sets, Prestige/Elite in football).

They restock randomly between 6-10AM typically Tuesday-Friday.   Topps products tend to last without selling out a few days so if you check daily you'll have some luck.

#1 is well covered here, especially in the reply by bbcardz.

#2 - Check on here as well. There is now a trade matching feature that will match your wants with others traders and vice versa. I'm not currently trading for life reasons, but I am willing to sell cards for reasonable (pre-COVID) prices. I don't have much baseball and football left in the range of years you're searching, but if I have any you need, PM me.

#3 - Grading is not worth it at ALL to me. Unless you have a VERY HIGHLY sought out card in nearly perfect condition and want to sell it, it's not going to net you too much to be worth the time and money to grade anything right now. All the cheap levels of grading have been shut down by the major grading companies for months and even the expensive levels take months to get the cards back. The pandemic REALLY changed the hobby a TON!!! People flooded into the hobby to either pick up the hobby again while stuck at home or to invest as the cards started selling for ridiculous amounts of money. You missed a lot over the past couple of years.

#4 - Read the thread that bbcardz linked and it explains a ton about the retail side of things. The last 2 replies about "re-stocking times and days" missed the point where there is NOT a section to restock in the first place. Many retail stores eliminated them because they had to put their own employees at risk in those sections JUST to keep the calm and make sure people followed the rules. It didn't help. Again, read the link to see all the BS that happened across the country dealing with cards at retail stores. Some of those stores across the country are selling them again, but not in major cities like ATL. None are selling cards in-store in my area either. Online or a local card shop are about the only way to buy packs and boxes of cards now.

Welcome back to the site! The site has changed for the better in the time you've missed (lots of new features and options, and plenty of great new members), but the hobby has changed even more and not really in a good way. Remember the late-80's and the gluttony of cards available? Now triple the cards available each year in every sport and then realize there is only ONE company for each sport that is making cards. In a few years, that will all change again as Fanatics starts making cards and has pushed Topps and Panini out of all the major sports.

I am new as well so I can kind of only help with 4. From what I have read people are going in on stocking days and buying every single thing they see and flipping them to the point where companies like target and Wal-Mart have just stopped with them entirely because people are buying them for 5 bucks lets say and selling them for 10 and that just caused companies like that to stop doing it because I have the same situation with my closest Wal-Mart and target. For a suggestion if you have a Rite aid or a Walgreens near you look there. I have found 80 card packs there for a somewhat high price and Rite aids website says they have some over the counter so check that out and best of luck.

Regarding where to buy cards: my closest local card shop is over 90 miles away, and my local Walmart is very very unpredictable about ever carrying anything. I've been ordering from blowout cards with good success on pricing and timely delivery, and I've heard good things about steel city collectibles online sales as well. Both Walmart and target sell some retail blasters online for direct delivery if you will wait for a couple days for delivery. Good luck! Happy collecting! 

Wow, in reply to everyone that's posted and sent me messages, thank you for all of the info! 

I guess I have been away and missed all of the action for longer than I had realized. I started to do some research online and I'm literally shocked at the prices some online second hand stores are selling products for. I saw a 2021 Topps Heritage box of 60 cards selling for $29! Would have been $5.99 back in 2018 when I had to pause everything. 

I've also noticed that Facebook marketplace is loaded with people selling cards at ridiculous prices! Saw on 8 card offer of past Braves stars for $35....all 8 being regular, base set cards. That is highway robbery! In total those cards we're probably worth $2 each. 

In trying to replace my 77-83 cards, I need to locate someone who has a huge inventory of commons/minor stars that is selling them in lots for low prices but the years I'm looking for don't seem to have many hits when I search. I'll keep searching now that I know what to look for. 

again, I appreciate all of the info, feedback and knowledge gained from everyone's posting! 

- Jay