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It's been a while since we've been able to purchase a C56 Hockey set - probably about 10 years now - so I was super pumped when this lead came in last month. A gentleman from Florida had contacted us looking to sell his near-complete set (only missing 1 card) of C56 hockey cards that had been collected by his father. Even though he lives in Florida, he's originally from Ottawa Ontario, which makes sense because the C56 Imperical Tobacco was produced in Canada, back in 1910.

He was able to find us online, and after a quick call to the office, he sent us a detailed message about his collection - including a full list of the cards, images of each card, and the provenance behind the cards. Usually, when someone is looking for an appraisal of their cards, they usually just send us a message saying "Hi, I have a box of 100 cards, not sure of the years but they are all MINT, how much would you pay?" And they don't usually provide us with much information to go on. So, actually getting all of this information up front was a breath of fresh air, and made the process 1000x easier.

The good news about this collection is that the cards have tremendous eye appeal, as they were stored for almost a century in some sort of binder or album. The bad news, is that in that binder, they were once affixed to the pages. They have since been removed from the pages, creating some paper loss and damage to the back of the cards - which is unfortunate because it dramatically decreases the technical condition and value of the cards. The cards themselves are not scarce, but the cards in high grade are scarce, so this was a little disappointing for both us and the seller. However, not all was lost, because the cards still do hold some value even in lower grades. And these examples will probably sell for a little bit more than a card usually in that condition because of the eye appeal of the front of the cards. Take a look:

Here's a look at the paper loss on the backs:

The C56 Imperial Tobacco Hockey card set is made up of 36 cards, and this collection had 35 of the 36 cards - only missing one card. He was missing one of the Art Ross cards, and no one knows the reason why. It's not like that card is super-rare or that much better than the rest, he thinks it may have just fell out of the binder at some point over the last century.

So, we did an evaluation of the collection, and made the gentlemen a very strong offer based on the condition of the cards. Some of the cards were still affixed to the album pages, so we had to assume the condition would be the same as the others once they were removed. After our initial offer, there was some back and forth between the seller and us, which wasn't really price negotiating, but rather more of understanding the values better, because he had looked up the cards on eBay and saw what people had listed them for and expected the same. He is not a card expert, so he's not familiar with how a EX/MT card differs from a VG card, and so on. But after all expectations were "reset," he was able to see how the condition really plays a factor, and was more than happy to accept our offer. He mailed the cards into our office, we then verified the contents of the collection, and mailed him a check overnight. The entire process, from the first phone call, to him receiving the check, took only nine days, and he was very happy about that. No one wants to wait weeks, or even months to get paid for their cards, which is why we have streamlined the buying process. So, if you're interested in selling your collection and getting paid fast, drop us a line.

We actually sent a few of these cards out to PSA for grading, so be sure to check out our Facebook page for updates on this collection. We'll let you know when we get the cards back from PSA and when they will go up for auction.