You could have donated them to the national club (CC & GTCC) for door prizes at the convention and taken a charitable donation deduction.

Or you could have donated them to one of the local clubs like LV, AC or others to help get new collectors interested in the hobby. And again you might have been able to take a deduction for the donation.

Or if you're just going to trash them I can help get them into the hands of new collectors and I'll even pay the shipping. If you're still collecting cards, I'd even be willing to trade some higher value slot cards for piles of more common cards just to go through them looking for more variations, player# prefixes, etc. and then I can pass on the rest to new collectors.

Just food for thought for anyone else who might have piles of cards they no longer want. I just hate to see cards trashed and no longer available.