If you acquired the cards as an investment as it sounds like you did, you could then sell them to the business at wholesale (what a card store would pay) and report the income as capital gain income. You would then sell the cards from the business on E-bay and report the sales proceeds as you normally would, and the cost of goods sold would be what you paid yourself for the cards.
You could estimate the cost of the cards and deduct that, but you would have to prepare a schedule to demonstrate how you came up with the estimate in case you were to be audited. You could research to find out how much cards have appreciated over the years involved to come up with an estimated cost. However, there is no guarantee the IRS would accept your estimate, especially if you had little documentation to support the purchase amount.
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