I can sympathize with you as I have a pretty hefty collection of cards too. Fortunatley I sold most of the easy to sell stuff, like factory set cases and unopened wax boxes when I was getting ready to buy a house in 1991..... that accounted for about $10K of my downpayment!! I still have probably close to 100,000 loose cards in thoses 800 count boxes along with a couple cases of wax boxes of 1988 Donruss baseball!! Even hot rookie cards don't sell for much, as everyone wants high graded professional graded stuff. Look at a Becketts and you will see the lists for all the earlier stuff reduced to individual price listings for just a few cards per year.
I took my kid to the doctor's office a couple years back and in the hallway was about 40 boxes of unopened wax boxes of '88 Donruss baseball cards. I asked about them and the nurse said someone dropped them off to give to the kids and said to help myself. I told her I had about the same amount of the exact cards sitting in my closet and she laughed. So that is a good way to get rid of them too.
All in all, I still have a lot of fond memories of my collecting days. My brothers and I really had a blast hanging out together cruising all over to buy all that stuff.