[egri]

The 1949 Bowman Bobby Doerr was the one that did it for me. It was in 2006, so I was around 11 or so and saw it at my LCS. The shopkeeper agreed to put it on layaway until after about six weeks I had enough saved up to buy it. It cost $60, if memory serves me right. I had recently gotten Doerr's address from another collector, and while paying for the card mentioned sending it TTM, and even before I had finished the sentence he was shaking his head no. A few months later, it disappeared when we had company over. Several years later, when I was in college and starting to get back in to cards, I came across a lot of three 1949 Bowmans on eBay: Doerr, Al Dark, and Eddie Stanky, for less than I had paid for just Doerr in the first place. Buying vintage in those days for me was buying champagne on a beer budget, but I dug deep enough for the trio, and the day they arrived, I packed up Doerr and Dark and sent them TTM. They both came back signed, and for Dark, it was one of the last autographs he signed; he died a couple of weeks after it came back.