What the Tech: How much is your collection worth?

AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - If you’re like most people, you probably collected something as a kid. Comic books, baseball cards, or barbie dolls, thinking they might be worth something someday.

Taking the time to sort through your collections may feel hopeless. Like a lot of people, we’ve saved boxes of baseball cards, comic books, and beanie babies.

They were supposed to be worth a lot of money by now. But trying to find out how much these things are worth today is no easy task. Unless you have a smartphone.

Open Google Lens on any Android or iOS device or with the Google app on your phone. It’ll open your camera, and you line up the item in the frame.

In a second or two, Google will show you all the places that item is found online. If it’s a collectible, it takes you to an eBay listing where you see someone selling the same card.

How many of us thought Beanie Babies would let us retire early? Google helped us find one sold on Etsy and eBay for $14.

It also works with things like Longaberger Baskets which we were sure could be worth thousands by now. Nope. It only shows you what someone else thinks it’s worth.

But if you check eBay, search only for what someone paid for it. Depending on the condition of your collectible, that’s what you can expect to get if you sell it.

There’s no guarantee that what you find listed on eBay is the actual value of your collectible. It depends a lot on the shape it’s in.

And with sports cards, it’s even harder to tell from a picture. Still, you can get some idea of what you’ve got could be worth a lot of money, or it’s just a memory.

There’s a good reason to check those collections, one specific Beanie Baby is said to be worth more than $600,000, and rare baseball cards have sold for over $5 million.

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