Just found my card collection from my parents' attic. Needless to say i was feeling a bit nostalgic from the 80s and 90s with memories of dollar signs flashing before my eyes as I planned to sell them for a fortune when i became an adult.

Come to find out today that they are essentially worthless and not even worth the effort of trying to find that one hidden gem (ie Jerry Rice or Griffey Rookie Card). What a crock of crap!

Anybody want to trade their old set of encyclopedias for my sports cards? One worthless POS for another worthless POS,

Why Sports Card Values from the Late-80s and Early-90s Are Very Low (cardboardconnection.com)

If you pay the shipping and handling I'll tell you that I threw away my encyclopedias and you can throw away your cards.

Kind of funny that the article sites a 1991 mj baseball card as an example that used to be $20 back in the day and was apparently worthless when the article was written in 2012. It's now back to a $20 card present day

if you've got this card, let me know how much you want....

I gave most of my collection to a friend who was a firefighter. They kept a collection at the firehouse as a pastime.

I got a couple sheets of cards stashed somewhere.

Back in '89 the plan was to sell those cards someday and buy a Ferrari Testarosa.

From what i'm hearing thats probably not gonna happen.

My friends and I would be going through our cards, talking about how much they were worth. My stepdad would often say something stupid like "they're only worth what someone is willing to pay for them." Turns out that @sshole was right.

Where are you located? (I'm in B/CS) If you are just getting rid of them, I'll take them off your hands. I have a bunch from those same years and now my son has an interest going through them. I know I still have some incomplete sets.

bucketofballs 99 at gma il dot com (no spaces)

I have thousands, late 80s to early 90s. Did a quick google search:

A USPS padded flat rate envelope can hold 2 330-count boxes. About $8.
A medium flat rate box can fit nearly 2,000 cards. About $14.

I'm happy to box some up if you're interested.

Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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I got a couple sheets of cards stashed somewhere.

Back in '89 the plan was to sell those cards someday and buy a Ferrari Testarosa.

From what i'm hearing thats probably not gonna happen.

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You got this

Overproduction of cards in 80's-90's. I'm giving them to my son. I do have a lot of MJ early cards and inserts.

There were so many baseball card companies back then. I have a ton of them, too. I kept them for nostalgia's sake, which is good enough for me.

I had mint Randy Johnson and mint Griffey Jr. rookie cards.

They be missing for years.

If you have the Billy Ripkin card from 1989, it's probably worth something.

By the way, I have the complete collection of the first 10 years of National Lampoon, and it's not worth anything either.

My brothers and I spent time fighting over who had a legitimate claim to this card.

My cousin's best friend's dad worked nights at the Topp's baseball card factory back in the 60's. His dad would bring him back uncut sheets of cards that had been tossed. He had an inch tall stack of uncut Mickey Mantle rookie cards. Back in the 90's he went back to his house where his mom still lived to look for them. She had thrown them out. He had a collector willing to pay $15,000 for them.

Holy Shnikey! I think my brother has that card!

My card collection, which I tossed in 2016. I think I had about 20k cards total, including complete sets from a number of years between 1980 and 1990. They had value in a book, but no one would buy them.

I had two 1980 Topps sets (includes Rickey Henderson rookie card), but no one wanted any of it, and I got sick of moving them, so they went into a dumpster.

My favorite of my tossed cards. I thought about keeping my Beaumont Golden Gators set (a 1985 giveaway), but I was afraid that would lead to wanting to keep another thing and another and...

I LOVED going to Golden Gators games when I was a kid. I wish I had gotten some of those cards. Just a little bit of future major league star power came through Vincent-Beck back then.

Here's another trip down B.G.G. memory lane...

Did anyone else have the Desert Storm cards? I still have the full set, among thousands of baseball cards that aren't worth anything.

DargelSkout said:

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Did anyone else have the Desert Storm cards? I still have the full set, among thousands of baseball cards that aren't worth anything.

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Yep. Had a couple of sets of those.

I never really collected baseball cards, but my grandmother never threw away my dad's collection. I think he has three or four Nolan Ryan rookie cards in good condition, and some other stuff.

dabo man said:

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My card collection, which I tossed in 2016. I think I had about 20k cards total, including complete sets from a number of years between 1980 and 1990. They had value in a book, but no one would buy them.

I had two 1980 Topps sets (includes Rickey Henderson rookie card), but no one wanted any of it, and I got sick of moving them, so they went into a dumpster.

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This makes me sad. That Henderson rookie is a sweet card.

I know it was absolutely worthless even then and that never changed, obviously, but I LOVED the 1987 Topps set.

Big Cat `93 said:

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I LOVED going to Golden Gators games when I was a kid. I wish I had gotten some of those cards. Just a little bit of future major league star power came through Vincent-Beck back then.

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Used to go to the GG games when visiting my grandparents. Also went to Jim Gilligan's summer baseball camp many times growing up.

I loved the faux woodgrain of the '87 Topps. I actually bought all of them from Jason Tyner's father. He ran a card shop in Beaumont on the weekends, and I bought maybe four vending boxes from him in '87.

I had a neighbor who sold his entire collection in 1988 for $4,400. His cards went back to 1975, and he had a vending case (12,000 cards, IIRC) from every year.

'88 is when I started buying more cards, and they were already overproducing them by then (outside of early Upper Deck).

I went to Lamar before I transferred to A&M. I took tennis in the summer of 1989. Jim Gilligan was our "instructor." He would sit on a folding chair working on something unrelated while we whacked tennis balls around. And if it was marginally cloudy, he would pronounce a rainout and give us a walk.

Gilligan was a tremendous coach for them for a long time. They were nearly always competitive and made a lot of regionals without much in the way of resources.

I have almost a full set of 1971 Topps baseball cards. Supposedly some are valuable. No doubt they aren't in the mint condition required for good money if somebody would actually pay it.

Actually 1971 Topps used to be very valuable. They're unusual in that they're black, which made them very difficult to keep in good condition. Any little crease would show up as white. That makes mint cards from that year quite rare.

Those are old enough that I wouldn't just toss them without doing some research and actually trying to sell them to someone. I took mine to card shops in Houston and St. Louis with no luck, but '71s could be different.

dabo man said:

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'88 is when I started buying more cards, and they were already overproducing them by then (outside of early Upper Deck).

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Upper Deck was always my favorite in that era. Glossy, thick, really high production value. The first real premium card. I always struggled when picking what pack to buy because I like UD more but they were more expensive than a Topps wax pack or whatever.

dabo man said:

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Here's another trip down B.G.G. memory lane...

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Wow! Ozzie Guillen and John Kruk were both on that team.