Find better prices for your prized collections

Whether from a fresh foil pack or a new-to-you tuck box, there’s no feeling quite like pulling the perfect sports card. Many people have made a hobby of sports card collecting since the first cards arrived in cigarette and candy packages more than a century ago. Some enterprising collectors have even made fortunes from it. No matter the size of your collection, if you want to make a profit, you need to know where to sell sports cards online.

Websites, apps, and other modern services made it easier than ever to buy and sell cards of all kinds. Yet, if you want to get the best possible price, you need to know more than how to create an eBay listing. This guide will show you where and how to sell sports cards online to get more bang for your buck.

Looking to sell other kinds of trading cards? Learn how with our article, A Practical Guide to Selling Trading Cards Online.

Where to sell sports cards online

Selling sports cards used to mean either doing a deal in person or going to an auction house. It often depended as much on who you knew as what you had to sell. Building connections and relationships is still essential for collectors and sellers, but online sales have leveled the playing field in many other ways.

Here are four of the most popular ways to sell baseball cards online, as well as cards for any other popular sport:

eBay

Did you know eBay sold more than 600,000 sports cards during an average week in 2023. The site boasts a number of qualities that make it a great answer to “where to sell sports cards?” That includes powerful search features, auto-populating product info fields, and a massive base of 132 million active buyers — in short, it’s a 24/7 card show where card buyers and sellers can connect on just about anything. The site’s authenticity guarantee also helps make it a secure place to do business for even rarer cards.

Specialty auction houses

If you don’t know who Mickey Mantle is, you probably don’t know how much his rookie card is worth. In other words, the best answer to “where to sell sports cards online” is often “wherever people know their true value.” That’s the value proposition of auction houses that specialize in collectibles. Some of the best-known examples of collectible auction houses include Goldin, Heritage Auctions, and PWCC.

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Live collectibles sites

You don’t have to go to a convention to enjoy the community and showmanship of selling cards in real time. Whatnot, , Fanatics Live, and similar live seller sites give you an instant platform to show off your cards while connecting with potential buyers. All you need to get started is a smartphone and your collection—though it’s also a good idea to use your social media presence elsewhere to promote live sales before and throughout the event.

Collectibles dealers

Run your own collectibles business? Sometimes your best bet is to sell hockey cards, baseball cards, and any other collectibles straight to similar businesses. The tough part is that you know they want to turn around and make a bigger profit than you did. But sometimes going for liquidity rather than the maximum possible profit will be the right move. The Beckett Marketplace and COMC are easy ways to connect with other verified dealers and private collectors.

How to sell sports cards in 6 steps

Sports cards may start out identical, but by the time they’re worth selling, no two are alike. It’s important to consider each of the factors that may affect their price, not just their condition and year.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to sell sports cards, from initial research to the final bid.

1. Do your homework: Before you begin selling your cards, you need to understand what you’re looking for. Obviously, one of the biggest factors determining a card's price is the athlete it depicts. If you want to sell football cards, you’ll get more for a famous quarterback than an unremarkable kicker. However, you should also pay attention to broader categories, such as the era of each card and its estimated condition. Each of these factors helps determine a reasonable asking price.
2. Assess your collection for standouts: Once you’ve done your research, go through your collection with care. Look for cards from well-known players, especially rookie cards from before they made it big. Prioritize any rare variant cards, such as those with shiny foil finishes, alternate colors, or numbered parts of a limited run. Even cards for lesser-known players may sell for a moderate sum if they’re rare enough and in good shape. Both PSA and Beckett offer online price guides that can help you arrive at prices quickly.
3. Get especially valuable cards graded: If you’ve singled out any cards you believe could sell for hundreds of dollars or more, you may want to get them professionally graded by standbys such as PSA or Beckett. This will establish the cards’ condition in a standardized way that buyers can quickly assess. Note that the grading process isn’t cheap and plenty of cards are still worth selling without an official grade.
4. Choose your online venue: If you have a rare find on your hands, you may want to start with specialty auction houses. Otherwise, you may be better off casting a wider net on eBay or with your fellow collectibles dealers.
5. Scan and document your cards: Once you’ve chosen where to sell, assess what details buyers on that platform are looking for and provide them. One great way to answer many buyer questions at once is to take a high-quality scan of the card you’re trying to sell. If the card’s in a grading case, you may be able to use a manual feed mode as well.
6. Start making sales: You’ve done the legwork. Now it’s time to move that paper. Be careful not to get caught up by momentum. Regularly assess where to sell sports cards to make the best profit based on what you have and what’s popular at the moment.

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Our recommendation: RICOH fi-8170 scanner

Those in the market for a versatile trading card scanner have no shortage of options. We take great pride in having spent the last 50+ years researching, designing, and developing some of the most advanced and powerful electronics in the world, including our professional grade fi and SP series of scanners.

Built to purpose for the most demanding document handling jobs, fi and SP scanners are capable of processing tens of thousands of pages per day at the highest levels of accuracy. Their intuitive integration capabilities with all existing work suites minimize time-to-value for businesses looking to invest in tools that will pay dividends for years to come.

The RICOH fi-8170 is a popular choice for card shops and online dealers listing both graded and ungraded cards. Our partnership with Card Dealer Pro and Kronozio makes the fi-8170 the ideal scanner for quickly scanning, identifying, and researching large quantities of cards. The scanner is also fast and flexible enough to handle your business’s general document digitization needs. Click here to learn more or shop the rest of our production scanner line.

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