Question about Indiana Exemptions and sports trading cards. HELP!!

[jensu82]

Here's the situation.

Hubs and I live in Indiana and do not own our home. We rent.

Our 1 vehicle, a 99 van, has a state tax lien against it for about $900. We pay $50 a month towards the tax debt.

I'm trying to figure out the whole exemption process. I think we're pretty much covered as a no asset case and we definitely are below on the means test.

BUT... my husband and my 11 y/o son collect sports trading cards together. My hubs buys, trades and sells these cards to add certain teams and players to his and our son's collection. It isn't a business, it's a hobby for them.

With that being said, they have a lot of cards. I know they don't have any single ones that book for more than $100 on Beckett's Media site. They mainly have a lot of common cards and a few autos and jsys.

I'm not sure how we would value these as they have a high and low book price as to what they sell for on Beckett, but obviously not all these cards sell that price.

I guess my question is how do we value them? How would a trustee value them?

They don't want to lose these cards because they've been collecting since my son was born.

[AngelinaCat]

We didn't have sports cards, but we had and still do, have a lot of family letters and postcards pertaining to local family and local area history from the turn of the last century. This is a very specialized collection, and interests virtually no one outside of family members, or local history researchers. So rather than try to itemize each item, I listed "Assorted Family Papers" and gave a total value of about $50.00.

No questions were ever raised about this.

Now, on the sports cards, I suspect the vast majority are of no interest to anyone but the team members and fans. I bought a collection at a yard sale for $2.00, that contains about 100 cards, thinking I would do very well on eBay. HaH! There has been absolutely no interest in them. So unless you have one or two very special cards, I would say that they are probably not worth very much. A dealer in such cards, can give a better idea.

[mountanddo]

What would you get for them at a garage sale? That's exactly what I'd value them at, if at all. I put all stuff like that under Misc.

[jensu82]

Thanks for all the input.

I was so confused at first. I just don't want to do anything wrong as far as valuing things too high or low.

[JimKutkowski]

Beckett is a joke for the most part. Look at completed eBay auctions for big dollar cards and estimate the rest.

BTW I'm a card geek myself, this is what I do for my clients.