If you have been following my flip quest, you have probably noticed recently that I have not been updating much – that is partially because I’ve been busy with other things (like house hunting for my folks, my deep love for making customs, writing articles, etc.) but also because I haven’t purchased anything substantial in the way of cardboard.

Until now.

I was recently browsing some online ads, and ran across someone who said they had a million cards for sale. My mind immediately goes to the following:

– the dude doesn’t have a million cards
– the cardboard mobile (my minivan’s name) would have to make several trips for this, if we did a deal

I started floating toward “meh, it is probably 150,000 1988 donruss commons”. Then after I went back to the posting, I noticed he said that while the key star rookies and such were pulled – the majority were from the 1996 to 2008 era.

Here are some pics he posted:

Again, my mind went back to one trip I made about 45 minutes to an hour away from a guy who said he had over a million cards. As a guy who moves cards in bulk, quantity is important. I went there, and he probably only had around 200,000. :/

To top it off, many of the boxes were filled with … Eric Anthony?

Oh well. Win some, lose some.

I got in contact with the gentleman on this collection, and garnered some more information on the collection. It actually was an inventory that was on beckett when he was a dealer. Apparently, he had been a dealer for years, and was wanting to move out of his rent house. The landlord had not been keeping it up as he should, but moving the cards would take a herculean effort to move.

He told me the bulk of the cards were in order. For instance, if a box was labeled 2008 bowman chrome football, while the box may not be full, it would in fact have said cards, and they would be in numerical order.

While that is impressive, it doesn’t help me too terribly much for the way I move these cards personally. I was just thinking HOLY COW – what kind of time was put into not only sorting, but putting all these on the beckett site at one point?!

As I looked at our texts back and forth, I found that we had spoken about a year earlier. He mentioned he had over 1500 jersey cards, which he wanted to sell all of averaging $4 each. That was over $6,400 right there so I declined.

Apparently everybody these days.

While house hunting, I’ve put an offer on two in the past few weeks – both over the asking price because the realtor said they would not accept anything less … both were rejected.

But I digress … I agreed to go to the gentleman’s home, and was worried that perhaps things weren’t as they seemed.

Was this the place that was going to have a million cards in it? at a little over 800 square feet, how could they even really fit to where someone could comfortably live in it as well???

Across the street was a house that looks to have seen better days – I think it is screaming for some artsy pictures to be taken there. I bet a photographer could do some good work with people posing various places on the property:

It is truly amazing how diverse this city is!

ANYWAY … back on track again… (sorry!)

I looked inside each room, and I quickly learned how you can live with a million plus cards in an 800+ sq ft house. You don’t just put them in the card room, which is stacked from wall to wall…

You also have them in your bedroom

and kitchen ….

and replace your washer / dryer with cards …

and … well, you get the picture(s).

I didn’t have all the money on me, so I wanted to make sure i got the best stuff first – because surely this was going to take more than one trip… or was it?

The cardboard mobile rides again!

Yes … it took 4 trips, back and forth of this ….

Nearly 350 miles in 24 hours on about 3 hours of sleep, fueled by lots of caffeine, a rain storm of Biblical proportions and a lot of music / talk show listening. I ended the trip on DC Talk’s cd Jesus Freak circa 1995 – DEF. worth the listen, if you haven’t already. Superb both musically and lyrically.

On the trips up, driving had little adventures. Trips back, on the other hand, was a different story. When you are hauling this

and this

each little sudden dip in the freeway becomes something akin to a roller-coaster ride, where you feel an instance of zero gravity while filled with fear waiting for your vehicle filled with hundreds (maybe thousands?) of pounds of cardboard to come back to earth…wondering if your suspension and tires can take it.

Yeah, it kept me alert.

I have got to say though – I was not smelling the greatest after all this. Not only did the driving on very little sleep get to me – it was the sheer energy exerted to move this haul … twice. First to my car, and then into my garage.

Here is a pic of my son who is over 5 ft tall looking at some of them …

These boxes are heavy after you carry the first few hundred!

While I don’t anticipate any $100 cards, I am relieved to know that there are some interesting items and cool cards!

Early 80’s cards

2 boxes full of Nolan Ryan (sorry for the pic quality – i know we have better pics of big foot out there from the 70’s!)

early 80’s basketball near set (no magic or bird!) and a binder of promo / oversized cards

Gotta love the Michael Jordan Hanes promo!

No inventory buy-out is complete without at least SOME bobbleheads!

some refractors

vintage (i would guess about 10-20k cards from the 70’s)

and finally, 4 boxes full of game used / autographed cards. Nothing huge, but there are some goodies.

All in all, this is going to be a very good money maker – I am just unsure of how I’m going to attack this yet, and how long it will take. In the mean time, I’ll have a blast going through it all!