My House Is Almost Full

I did it again.

I let a month go by without posting a thing.  I've had a few ideas, and still haven't written my definitive grading rant, but never sat down to put anything on screen.  Granted, I've been sick off and on and had my third (although painless) kidney stone migration all in the last month.  

But that's not what I meant...

The CDs were already there

I brought in another cardboard hoard.  Filled another floor of my townhouse with cards.  Now two out of three floors are stacked to the gills.  I'll be on Hoarders soon.  OK, maybe not - I can still walk around them.  They were unloaded on the ground floor about a month ago, and I carried them all up two flights last weekend.

This collection was from a friend of a friend who pulled it out of a storage unit after a prolonged stay.  So they were a bit damp and musty.  I actually ended up wiping down all the boxes and much of the contents to keep my sinuses happy.  My mission is to sell off as much as possible. 

Most of what is here is basketball and football from roughly the mid to late 90's, with a small percentage just outside that range.  Brands include Hoops and Skybox basketball, Pacific, Playoff, and Collector's Edge for football, and Fleer, Topps, Ultra, Upper Deck, and Collector's Choice for both.  As you can see from the photos, there is a mix of white bulk boxes, wax boxes and miscellaneous accessories.  More on that in a minute.  There is a small amount of baseball - mostly junk wax, and a little hockey.  There was also some non-sport, including a big batch of GI Joe cards, but I gave that back to the owner to take to a comic shop.

I'm sure there are many readers who get and flip collections all the time, but this is really my first time with such volume and diversity.  The first hoard was all monster boxes, so the sorting was pretty much one step and then consolidating with my other extras.

This time, I've taken a multi-phase approach.  

1. Sort out all the mixed bulk by sport.  I've cleaned out several long white boxes already into monster boxes.

2. Among those, sort into "chunks" of the same set.  There are some sizable quantities of several products, and there is a lot of just extra singles.  I would grab big stacks and put those together and then after I've seen groups of other sets, I'd go back through and put those together.  For some, I could pull them out and start complete sets. 

3. Then I tried to find wax boxes of some of the sets that I already found stacks for.  There is one unusual thing about 90% of the wax boxes in this lot, though...

The wrappers are usually all there, but...

The packs have already been opened!  Typically, the inserts have been removed (sometimes in a stack inside the box).  So there was no fun ripping packs.  And there were only a few unopened items.

That's where I'm at right now.  I sold two factory sets and a group of unopened boxes on eBay.  I'm now trying to gather as many hand-collated sets (or series) for the next round of auctions.  I should be able to trade for any missing singles in most of these sets.

Step 4 is to go through a couple hundred top-loadered cards that had been set aside as more valuable.  A few of those will go back into their sets, and the rest will either go on COMC or get sold to my local shop if he'll take them.  Depends on how many are for sale online.

As I mentioned, these have been in storage for a long time, so you know what the danger is...

Bricking!

Amazingly, the vast majority of these cards have popped apart with almost no visible damage.  I've got a 400 count box of snowy or bent cards bound for recycling, but that's it so far.

There are a few binders with some sets and inserts in various stages of completion.  That makes it a little nicer.

There's gonna be a lot of bulk extras at the end.  If you're looking for any basketball or football from the 90's, get your lists together.  I'll be offering up a lot of this for trade later - I don't do basketball, though I'm tempted to build a couple sets that I've been working on.

I will also give my readers a chance to snag some of the hand collated sets/series very soon.  A lot of them go for $15-20 on eBay, so it's easier and more fun to move them from here.

Ultimately, I will have a ton of bulk commons etc. to add to my TCDB For Sale/Trades as well.  I haven't even finished entering the extra stuff that I had before, so that may take a while.

Stay tuned!