Earlier this week I met with one of my best friends, E who wanted to finally part with his old school Pokemon collection! As I already sell Magic the Gathering cards on the secondary market E asked me to help list them for him! He was originally going to give them away, but parting with his childhood left him feeling that he may regret it later so instead he wanted to know if I could actually sell them.
Maybe you're sitting on your own collection that you want to sell... Maybe you want to know how people even figure out how much to sell their cards for.
I was given about 10 sheet protector's worth of rares and holofoils and another 400 or so random cards in a ziplock bag. He asked me how much I think I could get for them. After quickly looking over them, I explained that based on what I could identify he was looking at about $50 at the minimum. He nodded and explained that this would help cover his gym bill for next month. If it sold for above this amount, I would take a small cut after fees for helping him out.
Your Cards Could Be Worth a Fortune.... or not!
I was so excited because like many others—I also used to collect and play the Pokemon TCG (trading card game). All of the cards were from the 1st and 2nd generation of Pokemon, numbers #250 and earlier only. I recognized many of the set symbols, lots of rares from the fossil and Jungle sets, and many base set rares. Certainly, these cards had to be worth something right? These are the first sets that came out for the franchise, and some cards were in surprisingly good condition.
I had to exercise some caution by researching how card pricing works for these. There are a ridiculous amount of sellers on the Pokemon card secondary market and you'll easily find people trying to sell the same $9 card for a whopping $3000! Makes one wonder how much value a card has, and how much of it is due to the market or through sentimental value.
One of the first cards I noticed was a first edition Machamp holographic card from the base set. It was actually in NM (near mint condition)! Before I let my mind wander too far, I did some research on what the true value of this card was. Beyond Fantasy (2017) does an epic exposé on how common this card actually is. According to Beyond Fantasy, Machamp was the promo card in the base set starter decks. This card was subject to a large scale printing error in which every single card was mistakenly printed with the "1st edition" stamp. If the condition is below NM you probably won't be able to sell it! It's a very common card.
Card Conditions and Grading
For trading cards, there are two ways you can go about determining the condition (and thus the value) for a card. You can send your card to a grading authority to have them appraise and slab your card with a score, or you can attempt to "eyeball" the condition yourself. Cards encased and graded by PSA or Beckett will sell at higher prices as the condition will have been verified by a trusted third-party. Not to mention that card counterfeiting is a big thing. Grading your cards will also determine if they're authentic.
The downside to having your cards professionally graded is the processing time, and that the fees are for each card. Unless you own something incredibly rare it might not be worth the cost or effort to get them graded.
Earlier I mentioned that the Machamp was NM (near mint) condition. What this means is that the card looks like it was freshly pulled from a pack with no detectable defects anywhere on the card. If I decided to "get it slabbed" (graded), it would probably come back somewhere between an 8-10 on card condition. It may come back as a 7 EX (excellent grade). Getting this card graded, however, would cost more than what I could reasonably sell it for.
These are the guidelines I use to sell cards:
While I may not be a card grading authority, I do sell cards to other people. They definitely deserve to know the conditions of what they are buying. Everyone "grades" their cards in a similar way!
MINT: Never opened/ still in packaging or a professionally graded 10
NM (near mint): No defects, up to one minor defect. No visible signs of play.
LP/SP (lightly played/slightly/softly played): Upon first glance, no detectable defects, a few defects up close. The card may have some minor edge/ corner wear), maybe a scratch on the front or back of the card.
MP (moderately played): Visible signs of wear (if you were holding it in your hand), several scratches, roughed up corners, significant edge wear.
HP Heavily played. You can still tell what the card is supposed to be, but like the description says—heavily played, probably without sleeves.
DAMAGED: Bent or torn ANYWHERE on the card. Unless the print run is in double digits or lower for your card (rarity by quantity), it will likely not sell.
How to Price Cards on eBay
I started to look up every holofoil card individually. When I first started selling Magic, a store owner taught me how they price collections that people bring in! To figure out how much each card can be sold for:
Type in eBay search the name of the card, the set it's from, and if there is a special parameter/feature for the card. Foil for example. There are often special versions for the same name!
Adjust settings to only show "sold listings". People can list cards for whatever price they want, but this will show you how much the card actually sold for.
Read the listing to see the card condition. If your card is in better condition than the one that was sold, you can probably list it for a higher price. Try to view multiple pricings to get a feel for the "average price."
I noticed that many of the cards from the protector sheets was valued at between $8-$15 each, I thought to myself, okay this is good! How would I sell the bulk though? There were essentially 400 cards that no one would want that I would either A—Feel guilty to throw away or B—Would not be able to sell on their own. Since I was selling a genuine collection that someone owned, I could take pics of the cards and sell them as a "lot". Lots are a set of cards. I could sell them all at once, instead of one at a time. This helps make listing the cards faster, and I won't have to pay separate fees for each card.
TCG "Collection Scammers"
I knew that by selling the full collection, I could get a better price. People buy collections all the time to sell individual cards for more (gutting a collection) and also have a chance to "find something extremely rare" that the seller was not aware of.
A lot of people who buy and sell cards know this and literally create scams to get people to buy into "card lotteries".
Collection Lotto scammers start by taking photos of a full collection which either show extremely rare cards, thousands of cards in binders/boxes or both. Somewhere in their long description, they explain that not everything in the photos is being sold, only the chance at some of the cards shown. Many times, you won't even get any of the cards pictured.
Welcome to the eBay underground, this happens often where people think they are getting a steal on a collection only to end up with 10 or even 2 cards from the hundreds or thousands pictured. Other ones will say something like "5 holofoil rares guaranteed!" You end up spending between $10-$100 for bulk rares worth pennies. A card with a star or any type of holographic does not determine its overall value!
Luckily for me, I'm selling a real collection—the whole thing, to one person. I took photos of all the "good cards" and left the remaining 400 something cards in stacks that are shown in other pictures. I was excited, collection hunters will definitely be interested.
Someone Jumped the Gun
Within 2 minutes of the listing going live, I received an offer for $140!
Before E could get back to me to confirm it however, they retracted it. I wasn't instructed if I could accept offers or if there was a certain range he wanted to try to auction it for higher. One phone call later, and it's officially my choice to decide how much it sells for.
I also explained over the phone that I actually left 2 cards out of the listing and photos because Adrian wanted to keep one and then I found one I ended up wanting to keep. I asked if Adrian and I could each keep one card each from the collection instead of accepting any monetary payment from him.
I wanted to keep a card instead of the money, this was my childhood too. I'll also have a card to tell a cool story with! While I was making the listing I was overwhelmed with nostalgia.
I have this collection on eBay as an auction after the first 24 hours, it has 183 views, a person with the starting bid of $24.20, and a whole 14 people watching this collection for the next 6 days. Perhaps the person who sent the first offer is checking to see how much bidding competition there will be? I suspect that E will walk away with more than 50 bucks!
Rare Cards I Just Learned Existed
A few of the rarest cards in the lot weren't even "Rare" or had foiling. They were actually shadowless! During the initial print run of the Pokemon base set (no set symbol), there were no drop shadows to the right side of the portrait art. This was added in right after for subsequent runs. For anyone that knows MTG (Magic the Gathering), this is like the difference in rarity between unlimited and revised sets. "Shadowless cards" in Pokemon are considered to be pretty rare!
Left: card with a drop shadow, Right: shadowless
I'll find out by next week what happened, and how this collection sold for. I'm pretty excited since real collections don't get listed often.
Oh yeah! I'm sure you guys want to know what cards we chose to keep for doing this favor! E asked me not to tell him which ones because the nostalgia will get to him, but I'll share what they are here. Adrian now has a base set foil Dragonite in near mint condition...
and I have this one of my favorites:
If you went to see the first Pokemon movie in theaters (North America) back in 1999, you could mail in to receive a free Mew Promo card. This is that promo card. I went to see the first three movies in theaters as a kid, Pokemon 2000 is actually my favorite one, but I won't forget the anticipation of waiting in line before the theater opened to watch these films.
Well, that's my story about selling my friend's Pokemon card collection. If you have any questions about this blog or selling trading cards online in general, feel free to ask your questions in the comments below!