6 Things To Do With Your Childhood 1980s Baseball Card Collection

Many middle-aged collectors are digging out their childhood collection of 1980s baseball cards. What should they do with it next?

1980s baseball cards / Jason A. Schwartz

It's a story as old as the pandemic: middle-aged collectors are digging out their childhood baseball card collections from the 1980s and trying to figure out what to do with it. They search eBay for a few of the cards they assume are the best ones and discover listings for thousands of dollars and think they're going to strike it rich.

Jason Schwartz's stock answer for "Are my childhood baseball cards worth anything?" is "No." And while he's generally correct, if you're willing to put in some work (and you get lucky, and stored your cards well for the past few decades), it is possible to make some money from these cards.

So, what should you do?

First, understanding how eBay works is crucial. Anyone can list anything for any price. It does not mean that cards are selling for those prices. You need to filter for sold items to see what items are actually selling for. And even then, eBay doesn't always report things correctly. One reliable place to see actual sales prices is 130point.com.

The most important thing to understand about 1980s baseball cards (and really up to 1993 or so) is that the vast, vast majority of these cards don't have much financial value. This is considered the "junk wax era" because the baseball card companies printed cards in mass quantities, driving values down. You can find almost any card from the era extremely easily.

That doesn't mean that all of the cards from the decade are worthless. A lot of people love the cards from this decade.

If your goal is to make money, it's going to be difficult but not impossible.

Here are 6 things you can do with your childhood 1980s baseball card collection:

1. Grade and sell the best: You can pick out the very best cards -- the Hall of Fame rookie cards, the famous error cards from the era, the rookies of superstars like Bo Jackson and Barry Bonds -- and then inspect them very closely to determine if they're worth grading. Each card will cost you approximately $15-20 to grade, and most cards coming back a 9 grade or lower will not be worth that much in the open market. So you'll want a card that looks pristine. Great centering, edges, corners, and surface.

Next you'll need to figure out the grading company to use. If your aim is profit, the companies for that in 2024 is PSA, SGC and BGS might also work.

After you've received the grades back, you'll need to determine where to sell them. eBay brings the largest audience, but also the highest fees, and eBay is drowning in 1980s baseball cards, so it'll be difficult to stand out. You can set up and sell at a card show. If you bring it to your local card shop, expect to sell at a steep discount.

2. Sell the best cards raw: If you don't think your cards will grade high, you can always sell them one at a time on eBay or at a card show. You're not likely to make much money, but it can be fun and can help you fund the start of a new collection or payments for bills.

3. Sell it all at once: If you just want to rid yourself of the collection and free up space, the quickest way to do so is to sell it in bulk. Just know that anyone buying a 1980s baseball card collection is unlikely to pay much. A penny per card might be the best you can get, depending on what's in the collection. So for 10,000 cards, you might get $100.

4. Donate it all: Research local places that accept donated sports cards. Goodwill, children's hospitals, or youth centers can be good for this. I donated tens of thousands to my local dump, and they have a local school teacher who comes and picks them up in bulk. He gives them away to kids in classes, which made me feel good.

5. Give them away to trick-or-treaters: a hot trend is giving away homemade packs of "common" cards -- the ones are aren't terribly valuable -- to trick-or-treaters in packs.

Turning common cards into packs to give away to trick-or-treaters is a nice way to get rid of cards you don't want / Jon Rice

6. Keep it all: But if you, like me, get a wave of nostalgia when going through your childhood collection, you can always create a display and save the cards. Put them in one-touches and buy a wall display case. They'll make you feel good every time you look at them.

And then you might decide to start adding more nostalgia to the collection.