The Gathering cards, Shall I research or am I wasting a lot of time?

swingaloo

Just wondering if anyone knows anything about these cards and can tell me what I should be looking for before I waste whatever life I have left on Ebay and google.

My sister and her family have moved house and she has passed on a lot of stuff to my grandson that her son left in his room when he left home some years ago. Amongst them are a LOT of cards all of which are either in boxes of plastic sleeves and in excellent condition. Presumably they are, or were, something collectable. My grandson is not at all interested so I suggested he try to sell them on Ebay but he 'cant be bothered'. 

They are all from what I presume was a game Deckmaster, Magic, The Gathering and all look quite Gothic/Mystical. 
Doing a bit of research it looks as if there are many different series, issues and grades. To add to the confusion there are a lot of cards with the same title but different coloured edges. On Ebay they seem to range from very cheap to extremely expensive and looking at the sold prices it seem to be mostly sellers in the USA that have them. Postage for those is about £25 each but they are in the sold section so must be going.
In addition to about 1000 in English there are another lot of the cards which are written in French and Italian. 

I have no idea where to start, there must be about 1500 and the thought of searching every one of them is daunting especially as I find one that looks like the one I have but then it mentions 'grade' and there is nothing on mine relating to a grade. Some of them are listed and have sold for as much as £30+ for a single card.

I dont know if I should just donate them to the charity shop or look more into finding the value as hubby is convinced there may be one of those they find on Dickinson's Real Deal which is worth a fortune, lol.  However, hubby will not be the one sitting there wading through Ebay sales to check even though he is certain there might be a very collectable card amongst the rubbish.

Is anyone familiar with these cards please?

Brie

I'd suggest picking out the most perfect condition cards you can find and see what ebay says about them.  If they get you £10 each well lovely.  If it's 50p for 2 dozen I'm not sure I would bother.  

Slinky

Just guessing, but is the grade thing a measure of condition?

RedImp_2

Slinky said:

Just guessing, but is the grade thing a measure of condition?

That’s what I assumed.
Personally I would try selling a few lots, maybe in groups, see what happens.

Emmia

A quick Google brought up a site which has some information on this. If you've got early cards in good condition then they might be worth something 

https://www.yourplaymat.com/blogs/tcg-players-blog/are-magic-cards-worth-anything

swingaloo

Slinky said:

Just guessing, but is the grade thing a measure of condition?

I'm sure it is, but, the grading is on the card when it is in its brand new packaging and as they will all be the same condition when brand new it must mean something else. The grade is printed on the package rather than it being decided by the seller.

SandyShores

I've had this dilemma with a few things, its difficult to know value without spending time researching.  I guess it depends how valuable your time is, and whether its worth investing a lot of it into researching selling.  There's load of info on Wikipedia worth looking at.  It says about 20 billion cards were produced from 2008 to 2016 and more were printed so there are a lot of them around.  There's a description of the cards, and also a section on the secondhand market.  Apparently there's even a separate wikipedia page called The Gathering Finance because the secondary market is so large and complex.  I think I'd spend some time trying to work out if there were any rare ones, but possibly try and sell them as suggested above in blocks of cards.  At least with ebay you can use the auction function so you never know what you might get if a collector spots a good one.  The alternative is to try and sell the whole lot to a collector - you might not make loads, but at least they'd be decluttered.

YBR

I think I'd accept that I'm never going to know the true value, and just sell blocks of 100 to 250 on ebay for whatever happens. Perhaps someone else spots the rare ones and makes a killing, or perhaps they don't sell at all. Probably something in between. Best you can do without spending more time than its worth to you.

GrubbyGirl_2

Maybe find a specialist auction and let them do all the hard work

LightFlare

RedImp_2 said:

Slinky said:

Just guessing, but is the grade thing a measure of condition?

That’s what I assumed.
Personally I would try selling a few lots, maybe in groups, see what happens.

Typically things are graded 0 - 10 with most of the value being those of 9.8 and above.

They are usually is hard plastic shells and will have the graders sticker and the grade on it. Usually people only get the “good” cards graded as there is obv a cost associated

Is there a comic and/or collectibles shop nearby. They may be the best bet for valuation

Depending on your location - I know a good place near Crewe

KxMx

I have experience with non sport trading cards, I'd echo the previous suggestion of selling them online in bulk lots, FB marketplace might locate a buyer for the whole lot, talking to a local gaming/comic/sci fi shop, or contacting a few local bricks and mortar auction houses.