Baseball Card Values: The Value of Your Baseball Card Collection

Do you know how much your baseball card collection is worth? You know, the one that's been up in the attic for the past twelve years collecting dust? If you're like most part-time baseball card collectors, you don't quite know what hidden gems may be stashed in that old baseball collection. It's time to brush off that dust and find out the true value of the baseball cards that have been cluttering the darkest corners of your house for over the past decade. The value of your long forgotten baseball card collection can be found in a few easy places.

The easiest place to find out the value of your baseball cards is to go to your local bookstore or department store and pick up a recent copy of a baseball card pricing guide. These guides can be found in the magazine section and are produced monthly or bi-monthly. There are a few different companies to choose from with an almost identical list of baseball card manufacturers. All the top brands such as Donruss, Topps, Upper Deck, Bowman, Fleer, and more are listed in these pricing guides.

If you have a small card collection, you can spend an evening or two using the pricing guide to sort through your most prized baseball cards. The values of some may surprise you, and may influence you into parting ways with the cards. You can find the value of your single cards, or if you possess the entire set, search the price list for the value of the entire baseball card series.

If you have some baseball cards you know are coveted by collectors, you can get a free online price estimate by doing a search on EBay. It won't be exact, but more often than not another collector will have the baseball card listed and you can see what price they are selling at. This is useful if you have a few old rookies you're looking into selling, or many of the other popular types of baseball cards that have high value and collectors are looking for. Just do a search for the baseball card in a format such as '1982 Topps Cal Ripken rookie card'. From there you can determine if it's worth it to sell the card or to continue holding on to it until the value increases further.

Depending on the value of each set, or single baseball card, you may consider getting the cards graded by the PSA, or Professional Sports Authenticator, which will help keep the value of your card and will be an official rating for potential buyers to use in determining whether to purchase the cards from you. There are costs associated with getting a PSA grade, so it's only useful for high value baseball cards. The PSA will return the card in a protective casing with the PSA grade the baseball card received. To receive full value, or list price on a baseball card you must have a strong PSA grade, preferably higher than 8.

This is way it's very important to get your baseball cards in a protective clear casing as soon as it comes out of the card pack. Each time a finger touches the surface of the card there is slight damage done to the baseball card. After a fair amount of use the corners of the cards will start to become frayed which will lower the value of the baseball card even further.

Another way to find the value of your baseball cards is by signing up through a online price guide service; these are created by the same companies that produce the magazine price guides found in the stores. The monthly fees are roughly the same as purchasing the price guide, so it's just your preference on the format you want to receive it. I would choose a yearly subscription to a magazine price guide over the yearly price guide almanac's you can find in the bookstores as they will be outdated rather quickly. For the same price as one of these books you can get a yearly subscription to one of the magazines and always have updated values on your baseball card collection.