Selling Baseball Cards: Earning Your Trust at Dean's Cards

By Dean Hanley
Owner of DeansCards.com

Dean’s Cards recently purchased a large baseball card collection from a collector that included full sets of baseball cards from the 1950s and 1960s, as well as various baseball star cards and rookie cards, which you can see in the photos in this blog.

Part of a collection we recently purchased from a Seller. Click here to sell your baseball cards to Dean's Cards.

Even though this was a large baseball card collection that we purchased for a cost well into five figures, it was handled with the same, simple, trusting and personal process as all collections we buy:

• The seller completed the form on our Sell Baseball Cards page with details of baseball cards in his collection.
• Elana, the head of our baseball card buying team, replied to the seller by email, and then Elana and I spoke to him by phone to get further details on the baseball card collection.
• The seller then sent us the baseball cards by mail so Elana and I could personally evaluate them.
• We offered a bid for the collection based on our review of the seller’s collection.
• The bid was accepted, and we mailed the seller a check.

Dean’s Cards buys more than 500 card collections every year, and we are proud that sellers trust us to send their collections for our evaluation that they often personally have built over many years.

Some of the baseball star cards in a recent large collection we purchased. To sell your baseball cards to Dean's Cards, please click here.

Of course, it is a valid concern to be skeptical of sending anything of value to someone that you do not know personally. That’s why we work so hard to earn trust from our customers – which is proven by the fact that we receive card collections worth thousands of dollars almost every day, as well as glowing testimonials form sellers.

The best reason that I can give you for why we try so hard to treat people fairly is that it is simply good business. We do all our business by mail -- both buying and selling -- and I have taken great care to protect the reputation of our business. Dean's Cards has never kept a card that does not belong to us, and we never will. If we treated people wrong, we would be finished as a business.

As far as giving you a firm offer on your collection, there is simply no way to do it without physically seeing your cards. For us to determine the value of your cards, you need to send them to us. Any reputable dealer will tell you the same thing. Bidding on scanned images of cards is way too uncertain and would force me us bid very conservatively – and that would just cost you money.

We are proud to sellers trust us to send their collections. Please contact us if you are ready to sell your baseball card collection.

It usually costs a dealer about $1000 (not counting at least a day of his time) to fly out to bid on a collection. No matter what a dealer says, this expense has to be passed along to the seller. What about the people who decide NOT to sell their collections? Guess who pays for those trips? If you said, "the seller,” you are correct. We would much rather give the travel money saved to a seller for cards, than to the airlines for transportation costs.

Our "secret" to buying so many baseball card collections is that we simply pay more for cards. Our goal is to keep our costs down, so that we can continue to pay a higher dollar amount than other dealers. We have the bidding process down to a science and an art and it works extremely well for us – and for sellers. Please understand, we are very motivated to buy your cards, which is why we offer more than other dealers – simply put, if we can’t buy cards, we can’t sell cards.

If sending the cards by mail makes you uncomfortable, then we suggest sending us part of your collection first.  We will value the cards and contact you with an offer. If you agree to our offer, I will send you a check. Usually, after sellers receive the first couple of checks, mailing the cards becomes a non-issue. If my offer is unsatisfactory, then I will pay for the postage to send the collection back to you.

More star cards in a recently acquired collection. Please visit our Sell Baseball Cards page if you are ready t sell your  baseball cards.

The bottom line is that there is nothing that I can really say to totally assure you, the seller. At some point it will take an element of trust on your part. In reality, it all comes down to business ethics. If you do decide to send us your collection, we will certainly not violate your trust – and you can visit our testimonials page to read the positive comments from sellers and see how they feel about doing business with us.

If you have a collection of baseball cards, football cards, other sports cards or non-sports cards from 1869-1969 and you’re ready to sell, please fill out the form on our Sell Baseball Cards page so can begin talking. You have my personal guarantee that we will work hard to earn your trust, just as we have for thousands of sellers since I started Dean’s Cards in 2001.

We look forward to learning more about your card collection!

Sincerely,

Dean Hanley
Owner of Dean's Cards

Dean Hanley, founder and owner of DeansCards.com, is considered one of the foremost experts on the subject of vintage sports cards and has a regular column in the Sports Collectors Digest and publishes articles on his blog. Dean has also written two books on vintage sports cards: The Bubble Gum Card War: The Great Bowman & Topps Sets from 1948 to 1955 and Before There Was Bubble Gum: Our Favorite Pre-World War I Baseball Cards.

Click here if you have vintage baseball cards to sell -- 1869-1969.