Great thread, guys! From the card Pete used to start it, to rareback's amazing horde, this thread has it all.
I got back into collecting cards around '98, thanks in part to the McGwire/Sosa HR chase and the advent of eBay.
I was checking my spreadsheet the other day, which has all my graded cards listed. I did a sort by "date of purchase", and was surprised to see that this Green Cobb was the first ever "vintage" graded card I bought after re-entering the hobby. It was the early part of 2003, and up to this point all of my purchases were modern cards.
By March of '03, the luster of buying cards of known cheaters had worn off (
sigh), and thanks in part to this forum and CU, I had gotten the itch to buy something older.
Much older.
So this Cobb popped up on my eBay search, and I waited for the evening to place my manually timed snipe (this was before the days of sniping services).
I was high bidder on the auction (YES!
), but it didn't meet reserve (SHIT!
) at just over $1K (
this was 2003). I was bummed, but the seller relisted the card a week later with no reserve, and I won the auction for real this time, with the final bid actually being slightly lower than the week before.
After this card, I was hooked -- 95% of my future card purchases were vintage. Crazy to think I've had this card for 14 years now. 2 small surface wrinkles on the front, to the right of Cobb's head, account for the grade.
