Author Topic: Keep or Throw  (Read 1722 times)

Offline Scott

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Keep or Throw
« on: August 12, 2005, 09:49 AM »
As you may or may not have read in the MN Finds section, I took a new job in Southern MN and will be moving the family.  So, in a mad effort to purge all things unecessary and lighten our load by at least a ton of crap, I've been going through my old stuff

Any thoughts on wether I should toss or keep (and probably sell) this stuff:

Old Baseball/Football/Basketball sweat stained dirty ass hats
20000 Sports Cards from 1986-1992 (I've taken all of the Hall of Famers out of that mix leaving 20000 commons)
Old Star Wars magazines (Episode I hype stuff, Insiders etc)

Offline Jeff

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Re: Keep or Throw
« Reply #1 on: August 12, 2005, 10:07 AM »
Old sweat stained dirty ass hats  -  Trash Them. 

I am of the opinion that you should only ever wear Baseball hats if they have Baseball team logos on them, so you never should have had football/basketball hats in the first place...


20000 Sports Cards from 1986-1992 - Hmmm.... this is a tricky one. 

If they are just commons, you'll probably never get anything good for them.  Here's what I suggest - just walk over to Maplewood Mall and start handing them out to random people shouting "It's FREE card day here at the Mall!"  Try to look a little bit crazy when you do it...


Old Star Wars magazines - see if you can donate them to a local Elementary School.

It sounds kinda silly since they are old, but Teachers LOVE stuff like this that they can use to get kids to read/participate in class.  I donated a BUNCH of my old comics/magazines to the local Elementary School where my mom works and the teachers loved it.  With the school year coming up, you should be able to find a school who will take them for a reading program.
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Offline Morgbug

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Re: Keep or Throw
« Reply #2 on: August 12, 2005, 10:45 AM »
Are any of those hats the ugly, big-head style that sit way up on your mellon?  You know, the kind that kids like to wear half-assed sideways?  Sell 'em on ebay, let them worry about the stink.  Call it authentic vintage. 

Presumably you took out the rookie cards too?  Toss em, give em away.  You may regret it, but I doubt it.  Most "collectible" items produced from around 1980 onwards have been so mass produced that no matter how long you hold them they won't retain their value.

Jeff's suggestion on the mags is good.
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Offline Scott

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Re: Keep or Throw
« Reply #3 on: August 12, 2005, 11:49 AM »
I was planning on dumping the hats...
I'm still torn on the Cards.  I know I used to love looking at my mom and uncles old cards and seeing the old uniforms, hair and names of the 60's.  I would think my boys would too but keeping just the HOFers would be good enough.  I see no value in keeping 2000 1989 Donruss Baseball commons.  The hassel of trying to sell those anywhere is more than I want to deal with.

The idea of throwing them away though is a little disconcerting realizing how much money I sunk in to all of that crap.  It sure was fun though :P

Offline Jeff

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Re: Keep or Throw
« Reply #4 on: August 12, 2005, 11:53 AM »
I was planning on dumping the hats...
I'm still torn on the Cards.  I know I used to love looking at my mom and uncles old cards and seeing the old uniforms, hair and names of the 60's.  I would think my boys would too but keeping just the HOFers would be good enough.  I see no value in keeping 2000 1989 Donruss Baseball commons.  The hassel of trying to sell those anywhere is more than I want to deal with.

The idea of throwing them away though is a little disconcerting realizing how much money I sunk in to all of that crap.  It sure was fun though :P

Here's another idea if you don't mind holding on to them during the move...

Pack them up in little ziplocks of 10-12 cards and give them away at Halloween.

Maybe the little fat kids expecting candy and the anti-sports "girly" girls would hate it, but the tom-boy girls and the sporto kids would love it!

Jeff
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Offline Brian

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Re: Keep or Throw
« Reply #5 on: August 12, 2005, 11:58 AM »
Quote
I'm still torn on the Cards.  I know I used to love looking at my mom and uncles old cards and seeing the old uniforms, hair and names of the 60's.  I would think my boys would too but keeping just the HOFers would be good enough.  I see no value in keeping 2000 1989 Donruss Baseball commons.  The hassel of trying to sell those anywhere is more than I want to deal with.

The idea of throwing them away though is a little disconcerting realizing how much money I sunk in to all of that crap.  It sure was fun though

I've kind of had the same experience.  I used to be big into card collecting, from the 87/88 to the early 90s, and finally had to get rid of some before we moved.  I've thought about purging some more, but need to go through them again.  Its kind of funny, I had a seperate shoebox where I kept my "good cards", consisting of my favorite players, rookie cards, or ones that were worth money (this was before all the AFA style graded stuff).  Back then we just went by "Beckett's" for our value meter.  Looking at some of the cards that made the cut to the "good box" is kind of funny now, lots of guys that never amounted to anything or are even in their respective leagues anymore really.

I ended up selling 3-4 large boxes full of baseball and football cards on a garage sale we had.  I sort of looked through them, but not real closely.  I sold them all to an older guy who just came and bought them without really looking for them, made like $40 or so...much less than what I put into them I'm sure.  I've thought about trying to unload some more to create some space in our house, but I wouldn't want to just toss them like you said Scott.  I still have some baseball, quite a bit of football and basketball cards.  I'll always save some, but I'm not sure how many.  I think along the lines as you do Scott, imagine if my dad still had all his cards when I was a kid.  The same goes for looking at old comics that were stored away in a friend of mine's grandpa's attic.  It would be neat if our kids/grandkids/nieces/nephews could see them someday.  Plus, it was such a big part of my collecting life.  I think I was about as crazy collecting cards back then as I am with Star Wars now.  Its unreal now looking back how many we had.

Offline Morgbug

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Re: Keep or Throw
« Reply #6 on: August 12, 2005, 12:00 PM »
The idea of throwing them away though is a little disconcerting realizing how much money I sunk in to all of that crap.  It sure was fun though :P

Comics. 

13 boxes of comics. 

Thousands of dollars.

I'll be lucky if I get a grand for them :'(

My wife says I can keep one box total.  That's fair. 
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Offline Brian

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Re: Keep or Throw
« Reply #7 on: August 12, 2005, 12:05 PM »
Quote
My wife says I can keep one box total.  That's fair.

This sounds familiar.  I really think women need more things to collect or something, so they'd understand our dimentia.  Maybe I just have too much nostalgia in me for things though.  My wife sees my old sports cards, comics, MOTU/GI Joe/Childhood Toys, and says "sell them or chuck 'em".  Easy for her to say, her stuff is still stored at her parents house :P.  Maybe it is just the mindset of a collector that makes things worse.

Offline DoctorPadawan

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Re: Keep or Throw
« Reply #8 on: August 12, 2005, 12:15 PM »
I'm stuck in a similar boat with the cards, Scott.  Right now, I have a lot of baseball, football, and basketball cards sitting in a trunk in my grandparents' attic because I simply got sick of looking at them.  It's one of those "fad collections" that I got into around 1987-1990 (when comic books weren't cool and I was obsessed with being cool) and although I've got some neat stuff by other people's standards, I just don't want it anymore.

It got to a point where my mother was asking me about them and I said that I relinquished all ownership rights of my cards to her and my father, and they could do with them what they wished.  For a while I thought, "Well, I do have Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Sanders, etc's rookie cards, so those must be worth something", but now I don't even care enough to look and see what they're worth.  I also had the first SLU Michael Jordan carded for some bizarre reason, as I don't remember ever actually buying it, and if I didn't open it, I must have not been terribly interested in it to begin with.

The only sports memorabilia item that I would want to keep has gone missing (a personally autographed 8x10 of Wayne Gretzky), so the rest of the stuff is as worthless to me as it is on a financial level right now. 

And I've found (especially with magazines or toys) that if you aren't sure of whether to toss or keep something, you can always donate it to charity.  The sports card thing wouldn't work in this situation, but magazines/comics/etc would be great for schools or children's homes, and even the old hats could go to Goodwill or the Salvation Army.  Always remember that our trash could be the greatest thing in the world to someone who doesn't have anything.

I'm actually fairly ruthless with stuff I don't want/need/care about, but I'm lucky in that I never really regret getting rid of it.  I think that a lot more of the stuff I've given to charity or sold would have gone straight in the garbage if it hadn't been for second thoughts.   :)

Quote
My wife sees my old sports cards, comics, MOTU/GI Joe/Childhood Toys, and says "sell them or chuck 'em".

I have yet to meet a woman who doesn't feel this way toward collectible stuff, but the moment you mention throwing out some of their old clothing or giving it to charity, they freak the hell out.  "I might need that dress I wore when I was 12 years old at some point!"  Or, the more often used, "I wore that dress on my second date with you in 1979 and I can't give that up!"

It's all about the attachment factor, men or women.  Women go absolutely ape**** when I tell them that I don't have any pictures of anyone PERIOD in my home, and men tend to think that it's a bit strange as well. 

Offline JesseVader08

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Re: Keep or Throw
« Reply #9 on: August 12, 2005, 01:58 PM »
This sounds familiar.  I really think women need more things to collect or something, so they'd understand our dementia.

How many pairs of shoes does she have?  Tell me that's not dementia.  ;)

My wife sees my old sports cards, comics, MOTU/GI Joe/Childhood Toys, and says "sell them or chuck 'em".

One thing I'm allowed to get away with is keeping my old stuff.  She knows that I'm keeping 'em, and that's it.  But maybe it's just because I've found enough cubby holes in the basement to hide store it all.   ;)


Comics.

13 boxes of comics.

Thousands of dollars.

I'll be lucky if I get a grand for them :'(

My wife says I can keep one box total. That's fair.

Only 1 box?  Do you think you can narrow it down that much?   :-\

I've only got 3 1/2 boxes of comics.  Who knows how much I spent on them, but how much could I get for them now?  Not even a couple hundred bucks, I'd bet.  So why sell 'em?  (It's a handy way to justify keeping them  ;))

And since I'm an idiot, make sure you let me know what comics you want to sell Brent.  I haven't read them in years, and yet there's still some series I want to finish off (Star Wars, Spawn, Alpha Flight, Ghost Rider, etc, etc, etc). 

Any thoughts on wether I should toss or keep (and probably sell) this stuff:

Old Baseball/Football/Basketball sweat stained dirty ass hats
20000 Sports Cards from 1986-1992 (I've taken all of the Hall of Famers out of that mix leaving 20000 commons)
Old Star Wars magazines (Episode I hype stuff, Insiders etc)

Hats - to the curb with them.

Sports Cards - tough call.  I totally understand enjoying looking through those.  I've only got a couple binders of cards, but I still love to go back through them and reminisce.  Funny isn't it?  My vintage Star Wars take me to my childhood, my cards and comics take me to my teens. 

SW magazines - I personally can't get rid of anything that has a SW logo on it.  SW Magazines are no exception - I keep 'em, no matter what.   ::)


I guess this would be a big resounding YES for the "Are you a Packrat?" thread.  ;D