Sold some baseball cards

As part of getting the old baseball cards organized I decided to work to complete some sets. There were also other sets which had too few cards to make the effort to complete them.

I decided to list one of the sets on sportlots. It was 120 cards from 1980 o pee chee baseball. I didn't really expect anything to come of it.

But I was surprised. Last week there were two orders from the same person in Washington State USA. He ordered 12 cards in total. The sale amount was around $10. After sportlots listing fees I got around $5. I took the proceeds as credit on the site since there's some football and other cards I still want to order. I ended up losing a small amount on the postage to USA so I'll have to revise my postage fees slightly to ensure it's enough to cover my own costs.

It was a mix of cards from well known players like Robin Yount and Paul Molitor; and some obscure players.

As a seller I noticed some of the other sellers make a lot of pricing mistakes. Some people foolishly list their cards for the minimum $0.18. That's crazy. Anyone who bothers to go to sportlots is a motivated buyer who will always be willing to pay more. I didn't list any of mine for the minimum and I never would. Even if others had listed a card at $0.18 I set a min price of at least 25 cents.

Sometimes with older sets like the 1980 there will only be one card listed for a player. That means the seller has a local monopoly on that card. So you can basically charge any reasonable amount and you'll get it. Incredibly I saw people with the monopoly on a card listing it for 18 cents! For my cards even the most obscure and irrelevant player; if it is the only card listed then it becomes at least a 50 cents card due to the monopoly. For better players with any kind of name recognition then it is at least a dollar card with a local monopoly. That's how I was able to get a $10 sale on 12 cards.

I was pleasantly surprised at how my trial listing went. I'm now going to list the remaining baseball cards from the 1981, 1983, 1984 o pee chee baseball. I also have some loose Topps, Fleer and Donruss baseball from various years 1978-1983 which I'll also list.