Actually I would recommend trading them. You could get more than $24 worth of cards for them, and the cards you would get would be a lot better for actually playing with than the original cards. As someone first getting into the game, you don't really want a collectors item, you want something that is actually fun to play with.
I bet someone would be willing to trade an E/F or a G/H starter set, both of which are much more fun to play with, and are worth less, so they could probably throw in some other really useful cards to even the deal.