It turns out my collection is worth a lot of money and I hate it

After selling two of my most valuable cards on Ebay over the past few months, I've been reviewing the sale prices of other cards in my collection. I've come to a conclusion: you're all crazy.

I have a small collection of cards. I have a complete run of Wayne Gretzky 1980s O-Pee-Chee cards. I have a personal collection of Joe Carter cards that ranges from the (rapidly increasingly) valuable and junk that no one wants except me. I have a bunch of autographed cards from guys who played for the Jays World Series teams. I have a bunch of memorabilia and autographs of guys who played for the Raptors championship team. I have some random junk I got in wax breaks. That's about it.

I own a PSA 10 Donruss Joe Carter rookie. I bought if for about $80 or so a few years ago. It's now going for up to $800 on Ebay. That's nuts. I love Joe Carter, man. He's my favourite baseball player. I'll never forget his home run in 93. But $800!! And not to forget, I have a second version of that card that is autographed by Joe and authenticated by Beckett as a '10' autograph.

Honestly, I don't want to sell any of my stuff. I didn't want to sell my Gretzky rookie or my Gretzky auto. I wanted to keep them until I'm dead. But prices have gotten so out of hand that the money is simply forcing the issue.

I've started listing my collection on Ebay. I hate selling cards. It's so much work. Taking the photos, doing the Ebay listing, fielding offers, accepting an offer, packaging the cards, realizing I don't have packaging, going to Staples, coming back home, packaging the cards, going to the post office, dealing with customers who want their cards immediately even though I live in a locked down city in Canada during a global pandemic. And then going it, again and again and again for each card.

And Ebay buyers are insane. If you don't purchase tracking for your card, there is like a fifty-fifty chance you will get ripped off because all a buyer has to do is say he never received your card and Paypal just sides with him. You need tracking. The only thing is that tracking to the US is like $30 here in Canada. It's nuts.

Usually, for cards with little value I turn to COMC, but that service has become a total disaster. I remember back in the late nineties dot com bubble there was a company that launched a web site where you could mail in your music CDs and they would list them on the site and sold them to other buyers and deposited your money in an account. Same deal as COMC. I remember reading about this in a business class and how this company went bankrupt, and why it was a terrible idea to deal with all that inventory and why Ebay succeeded because it didn't actually have to handle people's inventory.

That was nearly a quarter century ago, and COMC is doing the same business model in 2021. It was fine when sports cards were a niche, but now it feels that literally everyone is involved and treating it like its the stock market. None of these people were around for the early nineties bust period, and they will go bust at some point.

I think their business model doesn't work. I hate that, because I love their service so much. All I want to do is just wrap up my cards in a pretty bow and mail it to COMC and let them take care of the rest. Instead, they suck, so I have to deal with Ebay, which also sucks, but at least I get the money more quickly.

I can't remember where I saw this, but I also remember watching a show about sports cards somewhere. It featured an elderly man who sold his tobacco card collection that he had since he was a kid. The collection was priceless, as he had kept the cards in wonderful condition since his youth. Yet, even though he was getting paid an enormous amount for the cards, he was upset. He didn't want to part with the cards, but he felt compelled to because its, well, money. He would rather the cards never went up in value and he could simply enjoy his funny little hobby without worrying about resale value.

I get it now. I totally get it. If I sell all of my cards, or most of them anyway, it is hard to justify hopping back into the hobby because everything is overpriced. I'm basically cashing out, with the hopes of coming back in a few years when things aren't insane. I don't even want to. I really want to collect cards. But we are in a serious global pandemic that is worse than anything we've seen since the Second World War. It's foolish not to take the money, because I don't know what tomorrow will bring. Money pays the rent; Joe Carter doesn't.

I may quit collecting altogether. But when I mean altogether, I mean sports cards. I'll find another collecting hobby.

Do you collect anything else besides sports cards? Are you collecting other things besides cards now that the hobby has become so expensive?

Do you feel like quitting the hobby?