[swarmee]

My biggest loss was not a card, but when I was in college, I heavily collected the F. Earl Christy college cheerleader postcard sets. Being from Georgia Tech, I knew that he had never done a printed GT item. Well, the Atlanta Toy Museum listed some "overflow" items that they didn't want to store anymore, and one was a hand-painted handkerchief of a college girl twirling a GA TECH pennant. Bid started at $9.99 and with minutes to go, the bids were only at like $70. I had the "luxury" of being in Orlando at the time since I was trying out for College Jeopardy! that day. However, being 20 years ago, we didn't have cellphones with internet or the eBay app.
So I asked my college girlfriend to bid for me up to $300. Hey, I wasn't rich. It ended at $303 or something. I send the buyer (since you could see full usernames back then) an offer of $500 and said once I graduated, I would be able to pay even more. I think I got one message back from him that he wasn't selling at the time, and when I tried emailing the address ten years ago, it bounced. I would pay $1,000 now.