"Bring the truck!"
It was music to my ears. A few weeks ago, I was sitting in my office when my Vice President Scott called me and said those three little words. At the time, he was down in South Jersey appraising a HUGE vintage collection of sports cards. I knew this collection was massive and I knew it had tons of value - but I didn't know that we could close a deal like this in just a single day, and that we'd need a UHaul to bring it all home!
It all started back in early November when a woman called up our office and spoke to one of our specialists. She had mentioned that she had tons of cards, all in boxes, stored throughout her office and warehouse. But, she was unable to put together any sort of inventory list or send any images over. Usually, when you get a lead like this one, it becomes very difficult because with so little information, you have no idea what you're getting yourself into. And usually, when someone has "tons of cards", they are going to be from the junk wax era - and have little to no value. So, our specialist pressed a little harder to try to find out any kind of information that could give us a clue into what she had. They talked for a few minutes, and it finally came out that this was her late husbands' collection, who was actually a long time customer of Just Collect. She also still had old packing slip laying around - which is how she got our information. Perfect. Our specialist then asked her to read off the items on the packing slip. He had bought a few vintage sets off of us a few years back. As soon as he realized that this was a solid lead, he passed it off to your VP, Scott, for further vetting.
Scott spoke with the woman for about a half hour and then set up an in-home appraisal appointment for the upcoming weekend. Turns out, her husband was avid collector of many things, including antiques, toys, and even cars - but most interestingly for us, he had been a multiple-decade collector of vintage sports cards, and at one point in his collecting career had even bought directly from Topps! This was incredible. He had amassed over a million cards, both sports and non-sports, with the majority of them falling into the 1950s and 1960s range. Not only was he a collector, but he was a well-respected dealer and consignor as well. Unfortunately, he passed away the previous summer, as he had been sick. He had sold a lot of the collection off previously, but now it was now up to his wife to liquidate the rest. She had just got done with selling off all of the toys, but was now looking to sell the cards because she actually needed to sell the warehouse that the cards were all stored in. The good news is that her children were able to help her put all the boxes in order, so if someone were to come in, it would be easy to navigate through. She made it very clear that she had no interest on consigning the collection. She wanted to close the estate as quickly as possible, and to do so, she would need to sell outright, because consigning would take months. She definitely did her homework.. putting together all the information she could find with the collection, paired with what she could find online, to get a general idea of what the collection was worth. She even developed a list of dealers and companies that wanted to sell to. Her goal was to contact two companies per week until she was able to sell the collection outright. No consignment. No cherry picking. She was just looking for a straight up sale. And we're not gonna lie, we weren't the first company to go in there and see the collection - we were actually the second. The first company, which was local, was set on consignment, and was not looking to buy outright. Obviously, this didn't fit with her plan, and that is where our expertise came in.
This collection of sports memorabilia was absolutely insane. Not only were there over a million cards, but there were programs, yearbooks, unopened rack packs, uncut sheets, photos, autographs, etc. - you name it, it was there. There were so many vintage cards from the 1950's & 1960's that you would need to make it your full time job for like six months to just go through the whole collection! Which is why I was so surprised to get that call from Scott, telling me to get the truck. But, maybe I shouldn't be surprised anymore, because we have been doing this for over a decade now, and have gotten the appraisal process down to a science - something I am very proud of.
Anyway, Scott went down on a Saturday morning to review the collection, and was of course early for the appointment. If you know Scott, you know how he is about being on time for things. Being on time for him is being a half hour early, which is a good thing, because we take great pride in being punctual for every appointment! He actually got down to the appointment in South Jersey about 45 minutes early, but the woman was ready and was eager to start, so she invited him to start. Scott literally spent the entire day looking through the collection. It took about 9 hours from start to finish, and we agreed on a price with the seller within minutes after completing the evaluation. She said she was actually shocked with how accurate and close our offer was to what she had in mind. She told us that she set parameters around what she wanted for the collection, and our offer fell right smack in the middle, so it was an easy decision to sell to us. So, after we agreed in price, Scott gave me a call and told me the good news, told me that he was staying up in a hotel for the night, and that I needed to "get the truck" and come down the following morning to get the collection! Like I said before, it was music to my ears!
Now, don't get me wrong, this was not an easy task. It wasn't like he looked at cards for for a few hours then made up some random number as an offer. Scott and I spent all day (or so it felt like) on the phone going back-and-forth discussing conditions, prices, and strategy. He was sending me dozens of photos of the sets and cards, where I had to do some research. We were emailing price lists to each other for the rare cards and sets. It really was an all-day commitment, and I'm just glad Scott was there to facilitate it all!
So, I showed up the next morning with a check, a 16-foot UHaul truck, and one of our employees to help with the move. Scott had spent two hours that morning (before we arrived) consolidating cards, pulling sets, and prepping boxes. After we arrived, it took about five hours to pack up the truck, then an hour to get back to the office, then another two hours to unload everything! It's an amazing collection, so let's take a look at it.
There wasn't that one standout card, like a Mantle rookie, that really made the collection, rather it was the hundreds of thousands of mid to high-grade vintage cards which made it worth our while. The highlight of the collection, to me at least, are the raw singles from 1952 Topps - about 400 of them, and the cards were in fantastic condition. We sent a majority of these cards out to PSA for grading, and can't wait to get them back.
Another highlight was the 1971 Topps Baseball Set. The 1971 set is one of the hardest to find in high-grade because of the black borders. They are susceptible to chipping and they show wear much more quickly than white bordered cards. Finding examples in high grade would be a homerun - and these cleared the bases!
Then there were graded cards. Thousands of them. From the 1950's, 60's & '70s. With most of them being part of complete sets. It's truly an amazing sight. One of those complete sets that tops the list would be the 1957 Topps baseball set - all graded PSA 8! The '57 Topps set is flooded with stars like Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra, while also including Hall of Fame rookie cards Frank Robinson, Brooks Robinson, and Don Drysdale! We were extremely happy to have this set as part of the collection, as the singles have historically done very well at auction. We plan to break up this set and do just that - sell each card individually via our eBay marketplace.
Not all graded cards were part of sets though. We came across a lot of partial and near-complete graded sets. Here are the other graded examples:
As you can see, almost every vintage set was represented in this run of graded baseball cards!
There are also football, basketball and non-sport graded cards in this collection. One of our favorites is the 1962 Topps football set, because not only do they feature an incredible dual image horizontal design, but because they are very hard to find in high grade because of the black borders and centering issues. This run of 1962s were all graded PSA Near Mint and higher, and included stars such as Norm Snead, Stan Jones, and Alex Webster! The graded non-sports sets and singles include 1938 Horrors of War, 1953 TV & Radio NBC, 1956 Round-Up, 1956 Topps Davy Crockett, 1956 Topps Elvis, 1966 Topps Batman, 1966 Tarzan, 1976 Star Trek, and many more! There were even a few 1959 Fleer Three Stooges cards in there! We don't get too many non-sports cards in, so we are super pumped for these! As for the graded basketball cards, there were some from the 1957 Topps set and the 1969 Tall Boys set - all of which were high grade.
Back in the days before the Internet and eBay, collectors used to acquire their cards in many ways. It was obvious that this collector explored most of the options, including buying cards directly from the manufacturers like Topps, Upper Deck, Donruss and Fleer. Buying directly from Topps probably explains why there were several runs of cards from the early 1970's that appeared to be from vending. Vending was a typical form that Topps offered to direct buyers allowing them to build individual series and finish complete sets of Topps cards without having to buy the wax boxes and wax cases and ensured that the cards would be absent the annoying gum and wax stains. There were several runs of vending fresh cards, including more than 10,000 from 1975, but I was most impressed by the incredible run of several thousand 1971 Topps cards that appear to have been factory direct. As you can see from the images below, they are really impressive and as noted previously, they are a real highlight of the collection.
There are also so many miscellaneous items in this collection that we could spend hours going over all of them, so I pulled out a few highlights. There were wax boxes, wrappers, pennants, yearbooks, uncut sheets and about a thousand rack packs. Some really cool stuff! The programs and yearbooks were all from the 1940s & '50s, the wax boxes were mostly from the 1970s, and the rackpacks were from the 70s and 80s.
The cards and memorabilia mostly ranged from the 1940s to the mid-1970s. It's one of the more valuable collections we've ever purchased, and definitely the largest! Collections like these are hard for most dealers or companies to even value, let alone purchase, which is why they would all want to consign. But not us. We're in this to buy, and we want to continue to help sellers get what they deserve for their collections. So, spread the word - JUST COLLECT IS BUYING! Take a look at what we are paying for vintage sets.
If you or someone you know is looking to sell their entire sports card or memorabilia collection - don't hesitate to call! We provide free appraisals on all vintage collections, and can pay on the spot. We can also travel to you (nation-wide) if your collection is too large or valuable to send through the mail. Contact us today to set up an appointment. We even pay referral fees!