99 Problems is Nothing. Try 1,000,000.

At this very moment there are close to one million sports cards in my basement.

I kid you not. 

There are roughly 300, 3200-count boxes filled to the brim with cards.

Most of these are from the 1980s and 1990s, the famed junk wax era, and have been sitting in said basement (albeit a few different homes over the last 40 years) since I opened the packs/boxes and cases way back when I acquired them. 

The vast majority are not collated other than by set and year. The vast majority are commons, and every major sport is represented.

Each time I head into the basement I shake my head wondering what on Earth I can do with all of these cards. 

I tried selling them on Sportlots.com, which is a very cool site designed for exactly this kinda thing, but truthfully, the amount of work required to organize and list everything is bonkers. 

I thought I would find it somewhat relaxing to do all that sorting, but I didn’t. Plus, I think I sold about $25 in cards in a month, and netted about $12 after fees and such.

Still, it’s an option.

I tried to sell the collection as a whole, but the only offer I got was, well, kind of insulting. I literally could have made more by taking the paper to the recycling center.

I even tried to donate them. No one, however, is interested in 40-year-old baseball cards of players few people ever heard of.

So, here I am… with nearly a lifetime’s worth of sports cards in the basement.

And if I start breaking hockey again, well, that adds another 3-5K cards per week to the collection.  

You’re right, there are worse problems to have, I know. You're right, too, when you say it is a nice chronicle of my time in the hobby — but I gotta figure something out here soon. 

I had a longtime hobby friend suggest I take a bunch and make a bar or a table out of them, which would be cool if I had any idea how to make a bar or a table. 

Another suggested a giant bonfire, which seems cool, but also dangerous given the fact I have neighbors like right beside my house on every side. And heck, back in the 80s we didn't know squat about safety. Burning those cards could be hazardous to your health or something. 

So, I’m using this platform to get some ideas.

Please, comment below with how you handle this issue, if, in fact, you’re fortunate enough to have such an issue.