What has been your best memorabilia score?

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Posted By: Rob L

Picked up this autograph book page of the some of the 1933 Indians, including the manager: The Big Train. This popped up on eBay with a BIN of $75.00. Luckily I stumbled on it less than an hour after it was put up for sale. I couldn't believe my luck and it turns out the guy who was selling knew nothing about baseball.



Rob L

http://www.freewebs.com/loefflerrd/

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

My best was just a few months back...I picked up a Tris Speaker pro model bat at a local estate sale for $50.

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Posted By: davidcycleback

I won in auction a collection of signed baseball letters. When I received the lot in the mail, I was more than surprised to find stack included unadvertised handwritten signed letters from Jack Glasscock (4 pages, signed twice!) and Tommy Bond (1870s pitching star).

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Posted By: brock

I have two. First up is a 1965 Mickey Mantle game issued bat, i only paid $100 for it and then sold it for $5,000. And then Memory lane sold it for $2,500. My other one is a 1950-53 Larry Berra game used bat(before Yogi) i only paid $45(for 3 bats total). I still hate myself today for selling it and ill take that hate with me to my grave.

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Posted By: ErlandStevens

While this probably wasn't a steal, it maybe has the most interest here. This is a sheet of letterhead with a picture of the 1901 St. Clair Athletic Club basketball team. The players are identified. John Titus, who would later play baseball, is shown with his signature mustache in the front row to the left of the coach. It was $10 on ebay.

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Posted By: Shawn

This baseball diagram and rules dating from the early 1860s, is probably the most important or historical piece I have ever picked up. There is going to be some articles written about it in several different publications! The town of New Marlboro, Mass. will be exhibiting a large poster of the diagram for there 250th anniversary this year. Pretty Cool!

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Posted By: D. Bergin

A few years ago I picked up a c. 1890 Boxing Program at an Antique Paper Show. I found it buried under a bunch of other paper stuff on the table.

It looked like a standard generic Athletic Club program, nothing too fancy. It also had a ticket stub stapled to it.

I picked it up for 50 bucks figuring it was still a pretty neat old program.

When I looked at it closer I noticed the name J. Walcott in it. I figured it couldn't be who I thought it was but when I got home to do the research I found out it was the very same "Barbados" Joe Walcott (one of the very early black World Champions) I was hoping it was. It was an Athletic Club tournament in Massachusetts and it listed his 3 and 4th recorded fights.

I ended up flipping it to another dealer for $1600, which was a good price for him.

Sometimes I wish I kept it. I never saw that program before and I've never seen another one since.

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Posted By: Rob D.

About 10 years ago on eBay there was an erroneous listing for a 1954 Cleveland Indians World Series press pin that had been made into a charm. The item actually was a charm given to the players' wives in recognition of the team winning a record 111 games and advancing to the Series. I previously had seen in a Mastro auction similar cuff links and a tie bar that was presented to the players. At the time these sold in the $1,500 range.

I remember being nervous in the final minutes of the auction that someone else also realized the true nature of the charm. Luckily for me, no one did, and I was able to get it for less than $300. Not a tremendous score, but it was the first time I was succesful picking something like this off on eBay.

In those days of pre-programmed snipes, I was so worried about a computer glitch on my end that I also had two friends place bids for me in the final 10 seconds using my eBay log-in.

I've since added a pair of the cuff links to my collection, which makes me like the charm even more.

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Posted By: Mark

Not my favorite "steal" but I once got a NRMT condition Willie Mays Original Hartland for .75 cents at a garage sale.

Another good one was a 1955 Broolyn Dodgers Scroll Pennant that I got for $5.00 at a dry cleaners in East LA. Apparently they were attempting to clean it, and put it in their front window with the $5.00 price tag. I probably could have talked them down, but didn't want to "push" my good fortune. It wasn't even dirty, and graded at least EX/MT.

These were both nearly 10 years ago... it's getting lots tougher to "pull a Brock" these days.

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Posted By: Johh H.

I'm a collector of sports board games so the steals that jump to my mind are mostly in that area.

Back in 2000 I bought a mint 1962 edition (1961 season) APBA Baseball game from an obscure auction site for $45. It had been on there for months but I was hesitant because the description wasn't very detailed. I pulled the trigger when the seller offered me a money back guarantee. A couple of years later I won a mint 1961 edition for $82 on ebay. Both games were in absolutely perfect condition. What a thrill to handle those virginal pure white 40+ year old cards.

About 18 months ago I saw a 1964 Challenge The Yankees game on ebay with a Buy It Now price of $135 on it. CTY usually sells for $500-$700 in decent condition. The scans looked like it was in nice shape but the description made it sound like a well used copy...almost a beater. I figured that, seeing as it was complete, it's still a great price for the most in-demand baseball game of the past 50 years so I bought it. I emailed the seller for more details and he still said it wasn't a game for anyone fixated on condition. Well, when it showed up a short time later I was in absolute shock. It's probably one of the two or three best condition CTY games to show up at auction in the last 10 years. Even the box with the gorgeous painting of old Yankee Stadium is in superb shape. An unbelievable steal for $135.

One more baseball game story. Just over a year ago there was a 1966 season American League version of Bamco's Hank Bauer Be A Manager game listed on ebay. I only found out about it because the guys on the Yahoo Baseballgames group were chatting about it. This is a rare game that usually goes for anywhere from $300-$700. I put it on my Watch list and waited to see what would happen, not expecting it to remain in my price range for very long. Minutes before closing, I was shocked to see it was sitting at only about $130. I figured that the snipers would start inflating that at any moment but it never happened. Finally, I threw in a bid of something like $150 or $175. I won it for $135! I think the next one listed sold for $660.

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Posted By: joe

From an antique dealer who used to find items for me. Ty Cobb Trophy(Loving Cup), 1913 W. B. Jarvis Company.
Joe



Ty Cobb, Spikes flying!

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Posted By: Brock G.

I've been fortunate to score several nice items for bargain prices, hence Mark's "Pull a Brock" line, but this original Kail Red Sox ashtray is numero uno. Got it off ebay about two months ago. It wasn't a ten dollar BIN miracle, but just slipped through the cracks somewhat allowing me to scoop it up for about 1/10 the actual value.

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Posted By: davidcycleback

Not as exotic or lucrative as a Tommy Bond letter, but I remember when I won a lot of 25 identical Phantom World Series Tickets from one of the major auction houses. I wasn't sure what tickets were worth, but thought it was a decent price. I put one ticket on eBay and it sold for what I paid for all 25. I put a second on eBay and it sold for the same amount. I had doubled my money and still had 23 tickets left. The rest sold similarly-- though selling them one per week or more meant I had Phantom World Series tickets on my shelf. That I hadn't gotten the lot from a garage sale or flea market but a major auction house is what made it striking.

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Posted By: Anonymous

I snagged a piece of the orginal copper frieze from the old pre renovation Yankee Stadium about 10 years ago. It was part of sale of a warehouse full of YS material that was being sold by the J-Peterman store in NYC. They aquired it from the company that worked on the demolition of YS back in '73. Not a bad pickup for $55.00!

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Posted By: brock

Do you still have that fragment from yankee stadium and if so if you ever decide to sell it please send me email. thanks

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Posted By: Dennis James

I once purchased a lot of vintage programs and scorecards on Ebay for just over $200.00. To my surprise I was flipping through the 1938 World Series program and on the second page at the top it was neatly signed by Babe Ruth. As a bonus one of the scorecards was signed by Honus Wanger and Kiki Cuyler.

When the box was delivered it was just left on my front porch for three days while my family and I were enjoying our Forth Of July weekend.

By far my best ever purchase.

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Posted By: Rob D.

Sounds like the price was right on those, Dennis.

Sorry. Couldn't help it.

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Posted By: Rob D.

Reading David's post about buying and reselling the World Series phantom tickets reminds me of a similar experience with a group of 300-400 1950s, '60s and '70s baseball pocket schedules. For a short time Mastro operated a Web site on which it offered straight sales of items, many of which seemed to be "left-overs" of buys the company made throughout the years.

One such lot was these pocket schedules. I've never collected schedules but knew that quite a few collectors are passionate about that part of the hobby. Plus, I figured that flipping them individually on eBay would be easy (apart from the scanning process) because they were small, flat and easy/cheap to ship. The price per schedule worked out to less than $3 each, and there was a decent number (maybe 20) from the 1950s, and one third was from the 1960s. I didn't think it would be much of a gamble to break even.

What a blast it was. It turned out there were two different first-year Colt '45s schedules (which sold for more than $100 each) and a couple early Mets examples. Plus one of the 1950s was a Brooklyn Dodgers schedule. It was great fun listing them and then watching which ones brought prices that I totally didn't expect. It also was an education seeing ones that I thought would easily bring $20 or so sell for the minimum of 99 cents. Doing it on a part-time basis took about two months to move them all, but in the end the collection netted about three times what I paid.

I never have considered this a "score" because in the end I didn't add anything to my collection, but it really was a lot of fun.

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Posted By: martindl

Ah, the hunt and the good ole days of Ebay.

The most memorable was a Victor Batwing Football noseguard in absolutely perfect condition, though without the headband. This was in the very early days of Ebay, about 12 years ago, back when pictures weren't with the listings and even having the technology to email a picture was a major ordeal. The fellow selling it had 'Noseguard' in the title and the description said something to the effect of "I'm not sure what this is but I think its for boxing. Made of black rubber". Cost me $30 including postage. Its long gone now.

Ebay back in the day was awesome for finds. The search function brought back everything that included your word, even if that word was part of another e.g 'ball' would give you 'baseball' 'football' 'basketball' 'ballerina' 'ballistics' etc. If you searched for 'baseball' you could go through every listing in about an hour, because there were only about 500-600 lots in total and there was all manner of superb things. I remember being very sore about losing a presentation bat from 1889 because my computer froze at the last minute. It went for $56. I offered the winner $300 for he and he rightly ignored my email.

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Posted By: Clint

I have a couple. Paid a $75 bin for the Jackson and $35 at an antique store for the Cardinals button.

Clint

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Posted By: jay wolt

One on my favorite pieces is a 1914 Scorecard display piece
that probably hung in a bar ot a store to highlight the stats
of the games that ended yesterday.
There are A.L., N.L., & Federal League games listed w/ winning
& losing pitchers. And in the eBay description Eddie Plank who
lost to Boston was listed and I was searching Eddie Plank that
day (I live 10 miles from his hometown of Gettysburg)and this
came up.
Apparently no one else noticed the piece as I won it close to
the $50 opening bid. It was professionally matted & framed as
well and is around 18 x 24" maybe bigger.
To top it off, the wife likes the piece and its hanging in our
bedroom.

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Posted By: John Harrell

Probably my best score came about 8 years ago when I picked up this town ball bat for $20. It's made from an old rail road tool and is marked PRR.

John

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Posted By: Mike H

Antique shows and shops



Jimmie Foxx Pro Model Hannah Batrite $3

Walter Johnson glove $40

Eddie Collins top of the line Goldsmith glove $40

40s Yankees Amer L. Champs pennant $7

Gehrig Pro model batrite $295

Near complete set of Scrapps tobacco cards $200

Pennant mushroom knob (perfection) $90



Ebay

Gehrig H&B 35" model 125 $120

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Posted By: k ogara

the duck web i bought 3 miles outside of cooperstown for 40 dollars. had to re do the back it was missing half of the strap and the inside padding was shot.robinson signed bat 75 dollars at a flea market.it came from connecticut where robinson lived and it had clear packing tape around the auto. i had it authenticated by spence.The autograph collage of all hall of famers i got from a antique store for 75 dollars, and the pennant with autos i got for doing some roof work from a guy who used to get stuff signed at shows in the 80's and he had no interest in it any more.

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Posted By: MikePugeda

Some of my favories:

Mordecai Brown large photo (picked up about 4 yrs. ago for $10 at an antique mall in Illinois):



Babe Ruth doorstop ($20,antique store) and Yogi Berra Yoo-Hoo lighter ($50,small show)


Lot of 9 PR1 baseball tabs (seller misspelled DiMaggio's name in e-bay title, stated he had misspelled it in auction description, but never changed spelling in title-average price paid about $25 each):


Lajoie scorer (approx. $270 on e-bay):

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Posted By: Greg Theberge

Despite the fact that I had to sneak this Yankee piece past my wife (those of you who are familiar, we are sort of rabid Red Sox fans), my biggest "Score" is probably an ebay purchase I made a couple of years ago:

Being a pretty heavy RI Brewery collector, I just had to have it solely because of the ad it had for Hanley's Ale on the back cover. Other than that,there would be no reason in our skewed little world to own this piece.

What I found interesting is that when the item came in the mail, I found this upon opening the booklet:

Four 1937 signatures including DiMaggio.

Not a bad "score" for $20

Sadly, I've paid out the nose for the rest of my collection

(sorry for the big scans...yikes!)

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Posted By: Fred B

Difficult to select a best, but from a "wanted to buy" ad in the newspaper I got a mint condition Chuck Connors first basemans mitt.

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Posted By: pat

About 5 years ago a guy walked into the Chicago Sun Times show. He was not a collector but was there to sell a bunch of memoribilia that belonged to a family member for the past 30 years. There was a bunch of 1930s to 1950s cards but also some memorabilia. Of interest to me were three early Chicago Cubs home programs he had - 1910, 1915 and 1918. There was an old sticker on the front of the old plastic sheets they were in where the family member had written the year of the program and who the opposing team was. I needed the 1915 but he wanted to sell all three. They were all in real nice condition and I just quickly paged through them to make sure they were complete and did not have any missing or ripped pages and that the interior was as nice as the exterior. I bought the three for his price of $1,800 for all three which was pretty much retail. I needed the 1915. I already had the other two years but figured I could sell the other two for what I paid for them to some other cubs collectors I know.

About a month later I took the other two programs out to make some scans of them and send to a few people to see if they were interested. I pulled out the 1918 which was marked on the sticker as against the Boston Braves. I took a look at the Boston score sheet and Harry Hooper's name jumped off the page at me. I almost fell off my chair when I realized I was holding a 1918 world series program instead of a regular season program. For 1918 the cubs used a standard regular season program and just changed the scoresheet.

By far my best find.

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Posted By: CarltonHendricks

Pat, What kind of dough does a 1918 WS program bring?

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Posted By: Greg Theberge

Pat,

Do you have a scan of that scorecard? Nice!

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Posted By: scgaynor

http://www.lelands.com/bid.aspx?auctionid=811&lot=725

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Posted By: Greg Theberge

Thanks Scott.

Ouch that price hurts...unless you're the seller of course

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Posted By: Pat

Here is the front cover and the score pages. It is scored for game #2 which is the only game the Cubs won in the series.

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Posted By: Anonymous

Thanks Scott...nice shoot'n Pat

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Posted By: Greg Theberge

Very Nice Pat. I haven't added much to my scorecard collection in ages.

Greg