The Real Guide to Selling Trading Cards in Bulk
Commons make up the bulk of many collectors’ collections. Here’s how to sort, price, list, and ship them without losing money on every sale.
The Hobby printed so many cards between roughly 1987 and 1994 that the time period has its own nickname: the junk wax era. Looking to capitalize on the demand to own cards from players like Michael Jordan, Ken Griffey Jr., and more, companies like Topps, Upper Deck, and Donruss printed millions upon millions of cards.
While many have generated record sales in recent years, others go for mere pennies due to the sheer number available—and that same lesson still applies today: most cards in a collection are common or ‘base’, and are often worth less than it costs to ship them.
However, every card has a time and a place, and there are ways to turn your commons into cash, and for those lucky enough to pull inserts, short prints, numbered cards, autographs, and patches or relics, there are tried and true tactics you can follow to maximize your sales.
Want to know how to get the most bang for your buck when selling your trading cards? Let’s dive in.
Step 1: Sorting
Before listing anything, divide your cards into one of three groups:
- Singles: These are your rookies, superstars (like LeBron James or Patrick Mahomes), numbered parallels, autographs, and relics (memorabilia) cards that have recently sold for $5 or more.
- Lot material: These are cards of recognizable players, either locally or nationally, but not quite superstars. Think about someone like Chicago Bulls player Matas Buzelis, who plays for a big market team and has a following, but isn’t nearly as famous as a former MVP like Antetokounmpo. These cards aren’t numbered and don’t have autographs or relics, so they might have trouble selling on their own, but they can attract an audience if you have enough of them.
- Commons: These should all be base cards of role players. They’re mass produced and don’t feature a star or anything that makes the card rare in any way.
Unsure of what you’ve got? Look for sold listings on platforms like eBay. Don’t make the mistake of looking at listings, where prices can be inflated; make sure to sort by “Sold Items” so you know what buyers are actually willing to pay for the card. The same applies to graded cards, where you can search for population reports on PSA, and use sites like Card Ladder to track prices over time.
Step 2: Pick the Right Format for Each Group
Singles belong on eBay and other marketplaces, where they can be sold as individual fixed-priced listings. (Auctions are typically a better fit for higher-priced cards.) The eBay Standard Envelope makes shipping cheaper cards workable by covering cards up to $20 and costing between $0.74 and $1.36 depending on weight. Even still, margins can be thin thanks to eBay’s fees, which are roughly 13% plus $0.30 per-order, before you factor in shipping.
Lots are easiest when they’re primarily made up of one player, team, set, or year. Think: “Patrick Mahomes lot”, “Los Angeles Lakers lot”, or “2023 Topps Chrome lot”. By selling your cards as a lot, you save on shipping and fees, selling one lot of multiple cards instead of breaking that sale into multiple different listings.
Commons typically sell by count or by the box, requiring a much larger volume to be worth your while. However, there are a few different routes you can take:
- Live selling: Platforms like Whatnot and TikTok Shop are built for fast, low-price sales. Whatnot charges an 8% commission on sports cards at its standard tier, plus 2.9% and $0.30 per transaction for payment processing. Some people do collect base cards, after all.
- Dollar bins and card shows: Tables at local shows can turn commons into cash—without shipping fees eating into your sales. You never know what you’ll find in a bin!
- Set builders: As mentioned above, there are plenty of collectors that try and complete sets of cards. These collectors will often buy common cards in bulk in order to try and find the missing pieces of a set they’re looking for.
- Dealer or shop buyouts. Dealers and shops will often buy common cards in bulk. While you might not get the best price, it’s a quick way to move on from your commons.
Step 3: Price without Guessing
Pricing hundreds of cards one at a time doesn’t scale, so you’ll have to stick to a system:
- Anchor to sold comps from the last 30 to 90 days.
- Set a floor for every single—the lowest price you’ll accept.
- Set a mark down schedule so that your cards aren’t sitting on marketplaces for months and months.
Mascot’s Pricing Rules handle the last two steps automatically across thousands of listings. All you have to do is set a start price, a floor, and a markdown cadence, and Mascot will apply it to all the listings of your choice without the need for you to click one by one.
Step 4: Turn to Tech
Bulk selling can require lots of time if you don’t optimize your operation. The sellers who scale solve these three issues:
- Intake: Mascot’s AI scanner works with a flatbed scanner to identify multiple cards per scan, and graded cards import by cert number. No more scanning cards one by one or looking up every single card in your inventory.
- Distribution: List once to a wide variety of marketplaces like eBay, Whatnot, TikTok Shop, Shopify, and more through multi-channel listing on Mascot.
- Sync: When your inventory is synced on Mascot, you don’t have to worry about accidentally selling the same card twice. Instead, Mascot is able to sync with platforms like eBay, Whatnot, and more, so that if you make a sale during a Whatnot show, Mascot delists it from all of the other platforms it’s listed on automatically.
Mascot’s Lite plan costs $4 per month and includes unlimited AI scans for eBay and Mascot Network sellers. Mascot’s Pro plan costs $99/month and adds the full slate of marketplaces, including live selling channels like Whatnot and TikTok Shop, so you can get your cards seen by buyers no matter where they’re searching; it also includes the ability to power your own website via Shopify or Square, unlimited eBay imports, access to Mascot Mercury—a private marketplace of trusted Mascot Network sellers so you can get the best prices on the Internet—and more.
Whether you’re clearing out a closet or running a card business, the process is the same: sort, match the format, price with a system, and let software hand the rest.
Want to learn more about Mascot? Learn more about how the trading card platform works here.