Valuations for a noob

So, I collected cards back in primary school and a little bit into high school. This is late 80s to mid 90s, then eventually stopped.
I shoved them in the cupboard and thats where they've sat since. As a kid does, you collect your favourite players and went on values by whatever was in Beckett Magazine (internet wasn't a thing back then).

Fast forward to a year ago, and a mate of mine, had a co-worker who sold off a bunch of cards over time and cashed in. Enough for a house and car. I figured I'd pull the cards out and have a look and see if there was anything decent, a bunch of now, hall of famers and legends. I know cards were printed like mental back then, so it's a flooded market. But sometimes there's still some that get a decent value on, and now, they print limited editions and smaller runs to make the value more.

My only comparison the last couple of months while looking has been ebay, and can I say, are these blokes on crack? I found 2 cards for comparison that I have.
Some are fetching $$$$$$ but then the same cards are also elsewhere for the same cost for a cup of coffee.

I've probably got a thousand cards, some are literally in an old VCR box and have been for some time kept in a dry place.

Whats the market like for old cards now? Is it worth me taking the cards down to the local card shop and getting them to grade and give me some more info?
See attached images of the 2 I found that have some stupid asking prices. Are they just hoping for some idiot to wander along and pull the trigger?

Hey xanderfotos, welcome to the forum. I'm a bit of a newbie myself so my knowledge and advice is quite limited but what I would recommend is trying to find out the prices of cards that have actually sold, rather than the often wishful values of chancers, such as you've shown above.

My current goto site is https://130point.com/cards/ which does a search for recent sales on various selling platforms. I think it gives a far more realistic idea of what the market is paying right now and of course, you need to take into account local vs US markets.

Good luck with your search and sales

Checkout comc.com, pricing there isn't as lunatic as feebay.

taffster74 said:

Checkout comc.com, pricing there isn't as lunatic as feebay.

Click to expand...

Keep in mind these are also just people's asking prices not confirmed sales, so some can still be pretty crazy.

Yeah I can understand that, I was wondering where the exhuberant prices come from. Must be their own valuation because they think it's a good card but not based on anything like print numbers/rarity.

Where's a good place to offload them? I don't have a lot of interest in cards anymore, I've probably got a stack of varying condition that would probably help a few people here fill in their collections. Seems like a big job to sort them all too.