The Purge Part 1: Junkie’s Choice

This is a continuation of a series based on the acquisition of one seriously huge lot of cards. Here is Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3, if you’re so inclined.

Hark! the evening glow gives way to dark’ning sky. As the creatures of the earth nest in their dens to make way for the creeping dark, the night-serpent slithers across the world, casting deathly shadow on the very soul of man.

I’m going to sell Griffeys tonight.

I’ll be honest – I’m only about 60% sure I even want to do this. It’s kind of awesome having so many Griffey cards, but that wasn’t the deal. The deal was to buy the box, take out what I need, put in a whole lot more, and sell it back to the Interwebs from whence it came.

But I can’t keep them all, and now comes the long, difficult Sophie’s Junkie’s Choice moment of choosing which Griffeys will live in the collection….or die (by living in someone else’s collection). 

The Great Griffey Reckoning is upon us.

This is the Griffey Overflow Box in its current state. It includes the bulk of the 2,777 cards from the Adelanto Lot merged with thousands of my own duplicates. 

As you can see the Griffey Overflow Box now has its own overflow box on the left there which I call the Griffey Overflow Box Overflow Box. No worries, though. I expect that I’ll be removing more than enough cards that we can go back to the one-box system lest my emotions or propensity to hoard get the best of me. I am, after all, hella-fragile right now, y’all.

This step will be done “open binder,” meaning I’ll be able to see precisely how many of each card I have before a decision is made. I’m not assigning any hard-and-fast rules, though. I’m just going to feel it. I like to think I’ll know when I have enough of whatever card I’m looking at. I also need to be sure I’m giving the buyer his money’s worth with plenty of fun inserts, oddballs, promos, and parallels.

You know what? Screw it. I’m keeping them all.

The line must be drawn here!  This far, no further!

Ugh. FINE. Let’s do this.

Ouch.

And here's what the Griffey Overflow Box looks like now:

Ouch again.

That done, now it’s time to pick out a nice cross-section of what's in there for the auction photography. This won’t be too hard as there are ton of quality Griffeys here.

The rookies are excellent for this – they look amazing in a group photo. The other cards are a different story. I need variety - lots of different inserts and parallels, oddballs, colors, shiny bits, that sort of thing.

Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Now I’ll add a few neat items from my collection that I don’t necessarily need. This includes a clutch of slabbed and graded numbers, a sealed Front Row Hologram set, and a couple more Griffey cards that I suspect the buyer will enjoy.

The lot is complete. Now we can crunch some final numbers.

The quantity of Griffeys removed was a whopping 4,204, well below my pre-sort estimate of 5,000. We can calculate updated, accurate counts across the board. Fingers crossed…

Official counts: 6,635 total, 3,445 unique, 1.926 duplicate ratio.

Holy crap. This is it, folks. This right here was the end goal the Adelanto lot was meant to help accomplish. Not just fewer overall duplicates but better duplicates and less clutter. So fresh and so clean, clean. It’s a whole new world today.

Back to the dark task at hand.

OK, price. I’m a little lot torn on what to charge for this thing. A dime per card is fair, but there are just so many - I’m thinking I should start it off with a built-in quantity discount.

Then what about shipping? The original auction charged me $25.00. I’m thinking about doing free shipping and just including the expected cost in the price. It’s much more appealing that way and effective at this price level.

The bidding will begin at $400 with a BIN of $520.  That's just over 9 1/2 cents per card which is a steal with the free shipping (which would otherwise cost the buyer considerably - 4,000 cards weighs a lot).  The BIN would put it just over 12 cents per card.  Ebay requires the BIN to be at least 30% higher than the starting price.

Okay, auction is ready to go up. By clicking “List Item” I agree to the terms and conditions set forth in the eBay user agreement, yada yada yada. Dare I? I should. Nay. I must.

<click>

It is done. The Kenner Lot has been born. God Save the Kid.

I’ve listed the auction, but I will not be linking to it here. You should be able to find it pretty easily on the ‘Bay.

One more thing – if a reader of this blog wins the auction, be sure to comment on this post when it’s over. I’ll throw in something Junior Junkiesian as a bonus. Nothing big, but you deserve something for being such a big Griffey fan.

Good luck. To us all.