Your Best Deal Ever (Going Back All The Way!)

[thatkidfromjerrymaguire]

Well, I can't compete with most of these stories.

But mine is interesting in that it was pretty recent. In March 2020 I picked up this 1952 Bowman Minoso rookie on ebay for $8.95 with free shipping (there aren't any creases or marks, so probably a solid VG/EX to maybe EX). That was pretty cheap, but honestly not too much lower than what the average price was at the time. Anyone currently shopping for Minoso rookies knows this card would sell for 10x to 20x that today. He was very overlooked prior to his HOF induction.

Granted, that was literally right before the great baseball card price boom of 2020...but just goes to show you we don't have to time travel back to the 80's to get some good deals....there are probably thousands of overlooked cards sitting on eBay right now that likely won't be overlooked in a few years.

minoso.JPG

[atx840]

Purchased 100+ raw T206 Polar Bears @$25 a piece about 13 years ago. Most graded between 4-6s, several HOFs, two SGC 60 WaJo, SGC 50 Young and the O'Hara.

[Leon]

Then there was the infamous Trucker Boy Find...cut and pasted below... The seller had a -1 feedback on ebay (yes negative) when I bought the first card, an E90-1 Wags for 1000 bucks.....
He priced small cards at 50 each....and larger ones a little more.

I believe I have seen the last small group of inherited cards from the gentleman in Northern California. It was a very informative situation
in that I got to see a nice PCL collection untainted by modern collectors/dealers. It looks like almost all of the cards have been put into a scrapbook at one time as a majority exhibit strong corners and
back damage, though many backs were spared too....... It was neat to see how they were really collected and in what type of numbers, relative to each other. I believe the only cards I missed out on were all 159 of the Colgans, Red Borders, and Tin Tops (if any), and about 5-7 M101-1/2's....Nothing I could do...they just got sold.......The total for all of the cards I got was about 732'ish. I will probably only sell these through ebay or to a large auction house. I am keeping everything I have an interest in, as utmost and foremost, I am still a collector. Including what I had posted before the grand total breakout is/was (several cards have been sold already to happy board/ebay members):

D310 (12) w/weaver fr....overall gd-vg
D311 (61) all different pr-ex
E90-1 (18) w/Jackson (pr-sold), Joss..overall pr-fr
E90-2 (1) Wagner - nice SGC 20....2 moderate creases
E90-3 (2) common and pr-
E101 (9) w/Evers, Jennings pr-fr....major back damage..
E136 Zeenut '11 (113) w/Weaver in fr...others vg'ish
E136 Zeenut '12 (36) gd-vg+/ex
E136 HR Kisses (2) gd
E136 Zeenut '13 (6) all with coupon
E136 Zeenut '14 (23) 6 with coupon 17 without coupon
E137 Zeenut '15 (67) 24 with coupon w/McMullen 43 w/o coup.w/Risberg, Lefty Williams
E137 Zeenut '16 (1) with coupon
E224 Texas Tommy (5) w/Marsans, w/uncatalogued
E-Unc Big Eater (3) w/ horizontal ex, 1 in gd-vg, 1 pr
H-unc Western Playground (40) complete set vg+
T4 Obak- (2) still unidentified but not Weaver.
T206 Old Mill- (23) w/Cobb, Evers, Chance, Willis.pr-fr
T206 Sweet Caporal ?(1) Cobb 350-460 series...pr.
T212-1 Obak (47) nice mix of framed/frameless
T212-2 Obak (116) about 25 different slogans.. pr-ex-mt
T212-3 Obak (131) w/Weaver pr-nrmt/mt
T217 Mono (8) 3 that don't have back damage......pr-gd
T222 Fatima- (7) all common, 1 high number in fr, 2 cut in half, pr....

[Exhibitman]

I had a lot of fun with this one:

A few years ago, I went to a vintage paper fair. A seller had a case of miscellaneous sports cards from the 1930s to the 1990s. Mostly offbeat stuff like match covers and 'humorous' sets, but there was a lot of it. One card caught my eye in there, a 1958 Topps Jim Brown RC. It was in an old-school snap-tite holder (these were a thing around 1990) and looked completely roached. I couldn't even open the holder. I asked how much. The dealer barked at me (way too angry for 10:00 a.m., IMO) that it was $450 for the whole case, no cherry picking. Well, I could see enough value there that I was gonna make the deal anyway but I had to ask if he'd take less. Apparently, not a good question...someone needed a Starbucks I guess. Anyhow, I paid for the collection and he gave me a box to haul it all. The box had all sorts of packing detritus at the bottom, mostly moldy newspapers, which I left in there. I took the box to my car and went back to the show for a while. I then went to my office to look over the collection I'd bought.

One thing I've learned is never, ever throw out anything without checking it thoroughly first. I went through the newspapers carefully and this snapshot tumbled out:



Satchel Paige in 1949, shot by the team photographer, in the same sequence as the photo that became the TI that year in the picture pack. Needless to say, I was thrilled since I had no idea it was in there.

Oh, and the Jim Brown RC? Well, the holder was so old and brittle that when I tried to separate the halves it basically exploded. Shards of plastic everywhere; one even hit my glasses. The card itself:



That was a good day!

[JollyElm]

This is relatively small potatoes compared to some of the sick sh*t appearing in this thread, but I found this 1964 Topps #423 Aaron/Mays 'Tops in NL' floating around a bin of discounted (TAKE 40% OFF!!!) cards at a show out here. It looked gorgeous (and I frickin' love this card!!), so I negotiated with the seller and ended up taking it home for a measly $40...and it eventually came back as a PSA 8 through Bobby's group sub. The last two 8's on eBay sold for over a grand each, so it was a pretty good deal...

1964aaronmaystopsinnl423beforeafter.jpg

[Bobsbats]

As a kid, walking around the Willow Grove/Fort Washington card show, a dealer asked me if I knew who this was. As a 10 year old, I said I did. He said if you know who it is, you can have it for $90.00, to which I replied, it's Sam Wahoo Crawford and he played for Detroit, that's a W600 Sporting News....to which, the dealer smiled and said, it's yours for 90.00 if you want it.

Crawford W600 front.jpg

[brianp-beme]

Originally Posted by Bobsbats

As a kid, walking around the Willow Grove/Fort Washington card show, a dealer asked me if I knew who this was. As a 10 year old, I said I did. He said if you know who it is, you can have it for $90.00, to which I replied, it's Sam Wahoo Crawford and he played for Detroit, that's a W600 Sporting News....to which, the dealer smiled and said, it's yours for 90.00 if you want it.

Attachment 513018

Great story and nice dealer! I have a similar and less pleasant interaction with a dealer at a show when I was in my late teens/early 20's. I asked to see the stack of W517 cards in his case. He handed them to me and I was going through them looking for a Dazzy Vance card. I must have taken too long or he was just tired of this punk kid going through his merchandise, as he inquired, real aggressively, "you probably don't know what cards those are." I was kind of shocked, but I fairly quickly replied "1931 W517 strip cards." I had found the Vance I wanted and was about to make the purchase, but I slapped his stack of cards back on his display case and walked away.

Like I said, yours was a much nicer story. My story ends well though, as later a W517 Vance landed in my collection without the help of this grumpy seller.

Brian

[judsonhamlin]

Back in the early 90’s, Howard’s was an active dealer of cards - SCD ads and a bi-weekly mailer with everything from Old Judges through ‘70s Topps. Picked up a fair number of cards from them and was pleased with costs and grading. In 93-94, I was a 1L at U of Toledo and got a flier with what looked like a near set break of T206. That afternoon I drove down there and went through the set. The cards were priced solely based on condition, without regard for the backs. With a budget of 300, I was able to pick up a few Hindu Southern Leaguers and a couple of Carolina Brights but the grand prize was a Drum Sweeney for 18.00 that now resides in an SGC 40 slab.

[jingram058]

I love hearing these stories.

I miss those days tremendously. Yes, I know they are never coming back, but it sure is fun to see these stories and know they're being saved. This is a great forum!