True Mint by Rosen

[dbrown]

I posted this in a t206 thread a while ago but relevant here, too --

Back in the early 1980s, I was a 12 or 13 year old and obsessed with cards. My dad got into the hunt, and he would place wanted ads in the local (Bay Area) penny savers. Had a number of really good finds, and of course things were cheap. Those were the days.

One night we went to visit an older teenager in Atherton or Palo Alto - fancy neighborhood, fancy house. He told us that his dad was Alan Rosen, and he would give him cards when he saw him. (Divorced, and we can read whatever we want to into that transactional father/son relationship.)

The kid had a sense of the value of things but was still selling at reasonable prices. What I remember buying - this was a very long time ago - was a 1969 Super Reggie Jackson (still a favorite card, it’s so pure) and all four T206 Cobbs, in a nice 4-window screw-down. (99% sure they were common backs.) We paid him $225 for the four. The green one was a bit rough, some creasing in it, the other 3 were what we would have called excellent back then, or vg-ex+. This was around 1983 or 1984. Give or take.

I should have kept the Cobbs. I did the local shows and priced them at $700 and they just sat there. It took a couple years to sell them, at $700.

David