How to Sell Sports Cards Online

Is it time? Are you finally ready? That shelf full of binders is packed with treasure, and you could use some cash. Sports cards are still a precious commodity with a large and active community of traders, collectors, and fanatics. If you’ve been sitting on a few mint condition rookie cards, now might be the perfect time to start selling your sports cards online.

While there are still plenty of ways to sell your cards in person, the online world is full of great options and loads of buyers from around the world looking to give you the money you deserve for your best collector’s items — as long as you can find the right place to do business.

This is your guide on how to sell sports cards online.

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Where to start? Know your collection’s value.

Online sports card shops

General marketplaces/social media sites

Virtual Marketplaces 

Where to start? Know your collection’s value

First things first, if you’re wondering “where can I sell my sports cards online,” you need to understand the true value of what you’ve got. We always recommend starting by either checking a reputable online pricing guide or by getting your cards officially appraised.

There are a handful of options out there for valuing your cards whether you are looking for a full appraisal of your entire collection, the certification of a single card, or to just check with a free price guide what you think you’d be able to get for the hidden gems collecting dust in your closet.

One of the biggest names in the game is Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA): they’ve been around since 1991 and have certified over 40 million cards and collectibles. You can send in the highlights of your collection for authentication and receive a certified grade that will help give your card cred no matter where you end up selling it, though grading will cost you at least $50 per card.

The other long-running name in appraisal and authentication is Beckett, which offers a similar grading and authentication service – but while PSA offers a free pricing guide, Beckett’s guide has a monthly fee.

Mavin offers another free option for tracking how much your card has been sold for recently, aggregating real-time and historic listings from eBay and other sites. You can also check out Market Movers for sophisticated pricing databases and market intelligence via a monthly subscription.

There are plenty of ways to understand the value of your collection, but the primary considerations should be the price of the appraisal, whether you’re interested in an official certification and grade, and how much you’re willing to play the market — versus just trying to understand what something might be worth.

Online sports card shops

Now that you’ve gotten a better understanding of what your cards are worth, it’s time to actually sell your sports cards online.

As you can imagine, with the world of sports cards as big and well-established as it is, there are plenty of options for specific online marketplaces vying to be the best place to sell sports cards online.

If you’ve got a valuable collection of vintage cards, check out Otia. This online sports card store makes things easy by simply buying your entire collection. You don’t need to do the individual selling of each card; let them take it all off your hands and pay out a lump sum. You’ll likely have to pay for shipping, but they make regular buying trips around the country, and you can set up an appointment and deliver your collection in person.

Want to be a bit more hands on? Try Comc. They handle all of the work of uploading your cards to the marketplace, then allow you to set list prices and respond to buyers. Their fees vary depending on how many cards you’re selling and their value: for cards valued at lower than $50, you can either pay $0.50 per card for a 16-week wait to get your cards online, or you can pay $1 per card to guarantee that your cards are ready to be sold within 2 weeks. For more valuable cards, you can use Comc’s Elite service at $2 per card, guaranteeing fast uploads, high-res photos, and various ways to list the card: a fixed price, a 7-day auction, or the “Take Offers” option.

Lastly, for a more novel and even more hands-on approach, try Drip, an online marketplace for streaming live auctions and sales of trading cards. Always wanted to be your own auctioneer? Or maybe you just love streaming? Well, now you can hop on a live auction and sell off your cards to buyers in real time. Drip then covers the cost of most shipping and makes it easy and convenient to unload cards in short order, connecting you directly with buyers and managing the logistics for a processing fee at point of sale. This is definitely the most lively online way to get your cards out there into the world.

General marketplaces/social media sites

Maybe you don’t want to go too deep down the rabbit hole of trading card collectors, and you’d like to stick with something more familiar. Well, there are plenty of options for selling your sports cards online in marketplaces you already know and love (or love to hate).

The first place to start is eBay. You probably don’t need too much of an explainer on what eBay is and does, but you should know that it’s still a thriving marketplace for buying and selling cards. It’s free to list (until you hit the 250 listings mark, at which point they charge $0.35 fee per listing), and all they take is a small transaction fee at point of sale (plus the buyer typically covers the cost of shipping).

There’s also another eBay competitor in OfferUp. This is an easy and straightforward online marketplace that’s free to list, easy to use, and only charges a small processing fee at the point of sale (plus, again, the buyer covers shipping).

Lastly, a great place to sell sports cards online is Facebook. While it may seem like just a place for your uncle to rant about his bad day, Facebook’s most useful functions these days might be its Marketplace and Groups.

Facebook Marketplace connects buyers and sellers directly, and it’s totally free. You can also search for and find dedicated groups of collectors where you can meet fellow fans and buy and sell among a dedicated community.

Again, all of this is free, but it’s up to you to avoid scammers, handle shipping logistics, and process payments. But, of course, with a little bit of savvy, that’s not too hard. There are plenty of free and easy online payment methods like PayPal and CashApp. Just don’t ever send anyone your banking info directly!