Buy my Moustache ... Plus a Chance to WIN!

[mouschi]

Ever since I debuted my upper lip equipped with a manly handlebar moustache, I have heard TANNER! You absolutely MUST make a card with your moustache (or mustache, if you prefer spelling it that way.)

We all knew that it was going to happen. Well, friends - the time has come.

Years ago, Allen & Ginter debuted this idea with a hair from Abraham Lincoln. It was a framed mini relic.

http://www.mycollectionofcards.com/baseballcards/070515/2008-Lincoln-DNA-AllenGinter-front-sm.jpg

I was going to do that as well, but instead, I decided to amp it up a bit.

Instead of using an Allen & Ginter card, I opted for a full size card. Not only that, but I also used my own design, and sign it.

Here are a few other things that I did differently:

Instead of the measly little speck of hair like the Abe card, I went above and beyond. Yes, folks - I have equipped my newest creation with:

THE ALPHA HAIR
http://mycollectionofcards.com/baseballcards/070515/20150704_233825.jpg
Friends: straightened out, this is nearly 2 inches of manly moustache hair. The former top dog king of my upper lip. It didn't care if I was speaking or not - it draped down past my bottom lip like nobody's business.

In addition to this, I have added a piece of my camo baseball style cap. This cap is what I wear if I'm not wearing my plaid caddy cap. I wore it to Canseco's house, it is in Beckett and it is on my head many times when I am designing cards (including this one!)

http://mycollectionofcards.com/baseballcards/070515/20150704_235839.jpg

To top it all off, it isn't just a piece of it. It is a tag on the underside of the cap.

Wrap the hair, cap and autograph in a never before seen custom design as a red-ink one of one, and you have this:

http://www.mycollectionofcards.com/baseballcards/070515/20150705_113628.jpg

The back of it:

http://www.mycollectionofcards.com/baseballcards/070515/20150705_113443.jpg

http://www.mycollectionofcards.com/baseballcards/070515/20150705_113507.jpg

Now, this article is going to be different in two ways. Here is how:

1) I have posted this on ebay starting at 99 cents. The Abe relic had a tiny piece of his hair ... clearly not the alpha whisker. There was no cap relic, and certainly no autograph, yet it *STILL* fetched $20,000 if I recall correctly. Clearly, this *should* go for at least double. Yeah, he has the whole "former President of the United States" thing going for him, but was he ever in Beckett? I rest my case.

Okay, so maybe it will only go for a fraction of a fraction of this, but in the end, someone will be getting this Red Ink Autographed / Cap Tag / Moustache DNA Relic 1/1. The money will be put toward sending my wife and son on a mission trip to Mexico later on this month where they will be building a house and helping out at orphanages. Please bid! It is for a good cause :)

Here is the link: 2015 Mouschi 1 1 Tanner Jones Red Ink Auto DNA Mustache Relic Laundry Cap Tag | eBay (http://www.ebay.com/itm/-/281741892366?) - it ends in 7 days, or at around 6:35 PM CST on Sunday, 7/12/15.

2) The second part of this is that this auction doubles as a contest. Whomever guesses the closest to the end price of the auction will get this:

http://www.mycollectionofcards.com/baseballcards/070515/20150705_113936.jpg

The design prototype card for the 1/1, and as you can see, it is signed as well. This uber-rare, back-doored prototype is sure to be VERY valuable.

In addition to this, the one who guesses the closest to the end price will also get this:

http://www.mycollectionofcards.com/baseballcards/070515/20150705_113712.jpg

A special red ink autographed Rip Card. See the tab on the side?

http://www.mycollectionofcards.com/baseballcards/070515/20150705_113723.jpg

Rip that puppy open and find a prize...if you dare!

http://www.mycollectionofcards.com/baseballcards/070515/20150705_114055.jpg

All you have to do is leave a comment here with what your guess for the end price will be.

RULES
- Each guess must be in separate posts & if you guess more than once in the same post, only the first one will count.
- In the event of a tie, whoever guessed earliest would win.
- Note that you do have competition as this is running on other sites as well!
- If the winner ends up not paying, the next highest bidder will get a crack at it. Whatever the card ends up selling for is the end price.
- Price post editing will after July 12th, 5:35 PM CST will be disqualified.
- In the event of a tie, the person who guessed closest the earliest will win.
- In the event of a tie where both parties have guessed the exact end price at the exact same second, it will be settled in an internet televised match of rock-paper-scissors ... to the death.

If you happen to win the card in the auction, any cloning from my DNA will NOT be tolerated.

Hopefully this will prove to be as fun and entertaining for you as it was for me to put together. Bid and guess away!

http://www.mycollectionofcards.com/baseballcards/070515/20150705_113628.jpg

Again, the link is here: 2015 Mouschi 1 1 Tanner Jones Red Ink Auto DNA Mustache Relic Laundry Cap Tag | eBay (http://www.ebay.com/itm/-/281741892366?) - it ends in 7 days, or at around 6:35 PM CST on Sunday, 7/12/15.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gou7otMRUHk

[bn2cardz]

$777

[Jlighter]

388

[RaidonCollects]

444.45 :)

[Bestdj777]

501

[7nohitter]

$425

Great work, as usual.

[mouschi]

Thanks for the positive comments guys! Keep guessing, keep watching and keep up the good thoughts!

[almostdone]

Why not? There are defiantly odder things out there.
$467.72
Drew

[mouschi]

Video added to the original post!

[Cmount76]

$451.52 - Congrats on your magazine cover and Canseco outing!!

[mouschi]

People have been asking me like crazy ... WHAT IS IN THE CUSTOM RIP CARD!??!

I'm going to leak a little bit of this here. It has to do with this:

http://themouschicode.com/screen.jpg

Think: The Ginter Code Lite ... for Dummies. It should be a fun little scavenger hunt for whomever wins, along with a small prize at the end.

[mrmantlecollector]

$261.00

[7nohitter]

$257

[Jason]

616.00

[7nohitter]

460

[mouschi]

The guessing contest is now officially closed as the auction has less than an hour to go now. Thanks for participating! Once the new owner pays, I'll update everyone and let them know what it was. Please bear with me though, as I have multiple sites to see who was closest in guessing. Thanks again, guys - this has been a thrill :) Stay tuned though - The Mouschi Code will be open for everyone later this week to take a stab at for fun, as well!

[mouschi]

I'm a little bummed - after doing a lot of research, it looks like there were a few bidders that were the same person with different accounts that bid at the end. I have promised not to call out this person by name, so I won't. I have reached out to the previous top bidders to offer the card as a "best offer". Once the card is truly sold, I'll let everyone know.

[mouschi]

Sabotaged.

Yesterday afternoon, I heard my phone kaCHING a few extra times to bid my card up from $209 to $413 or $414 - Absolutely thrilling! After researching one of the bidders, it turned out they are a banned member on a forum, though I couldn't find anything negative they said.

The other person was another member on the forums, to which I reached out to letting them know I have my concerns of who is the high bidder, and they are the next in line for it.

Shortly thereafter, a new ebay member bid. They ended up being the winner. The person I reached out to wrote me back and said the following:

"Wait what? I didn't even put a bid in for it. I just checked my account and someone must have hacked into my account, someone also put a bid in for a Kris Bryant ref auto. (Which I didn't do!)"

We went back and forth for a bit, and after I told them the new buyer was in the same area, they asked for the address so they could check for me. I thought this was quite a strange offer, so I did a little more research.

Big shocker - the address of the winner was a fake. The phone number, however, was not. OOPS! I ran a search and came up with the address associated with the phone number. In an attempt to get the truth out, I told the person the address was fake, and showed them the address that came up.

Here is the next response:

"What phone # is it? That is my address. This is getting really creepy."

After my next message to them, they confessed and said they did it because they were jealous of me and my creativity. They said they were the top 3 bidders that had bid yesterday.

The next highest bidder quickly paid after I offered, thankfully, but ultimately, I was robbed of a chance of selling for between $208 and $412.

Unfortunately, I had multiple people tell me they would have paid more than I got, so I know I missed out getting the best I could for it.

Nothing is ever boring, is it? :)

I promised to keep the person's name a secret - it was a teenage girl who did all this. I mentioned that I would be proud of her if she confessed publicly online to people who did it. Though she was scared to do so, she ultimately did! Very classy move, I think.


So, that is all water under the bridge now. Going forward, I'm THRILLED that it sold and will give the exact price later, along with the winner! There were TONS of guesses about this all over the internet, so it will take a bit for me to do this.

If you have NOT won, stay tuned. I will be opening up The Mouschi Code for everyone to take. I had a fun time putting it together, and think/hope you will get a kick out of it as well. Though only rip-card owners will get a prize for completing, I do have some pieces I will be selling to help the mission trip fund.

As I have been given some lemons, in an attempt to make lemonade out of it, here are the first offerings.

The Blue auto for $15
http://www.mycollectionofcards.com.php5-20.dfw1-2.websitetestlink.com/baseballcards/071315/20150713_145445sm.jpg

The Red auto for $40 (only 10 will be made.)
http://www.mycollectionofcards.com.php5-20.dfw1-2.websitetestlink.com/baseballcards/071315/20150713_145506sm.jpg

How can anyone's collection be complete without an autographed card of a custom card maker?!?! :) Post here, or PM me if you want one!

[7nohitter]

Wait, some random teenage girl is jealous of your creativity so she created a fake ebay account? Is she stalking you, or she just randomly saw this on ebay?

[mouschi]

Wait, some random teenage girl is jealous of your creativity so she created a fake ebay account? Is she stalking you, or she just randomly saw this on ebay?

She is a member of a forum, and I think ultimately just tried to drive it up to perhaps win the rip card. She has admitted her mistake and all is good now.

[mouschi]

So, it looks like we have a winner! Before I reveal the winner, I wanted to go through some facts.

This contest was run on Blowout, Beckett, Freedom Cardboard, Sports Card Forum, Net54Baseball, my blog and facebook. Out of hundreds of replies, I found that the responses varied quite a bit. Someone guessed $0, and someone guessed $3,000. Here is a statistical breakdown:

6% said under $100
22% said between $101-250
37% said between $251-400
22% said between $400-600
6% said $601 and over
3% said this whole thing was narcisisstic/creepy
2% said they thought someone would plant my moustache hair at a crime scene
2% threatened to clone me

Of course, we do have to remember that 98% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

It has been a great week watching the guesses come in from all over the place!

So, with all that said - the winner .... drum roll pleaseeeee.....

SCF Member @Oriolesfan !

I will be pm'ing you with a request as to where I can send your rip card. Best of luck on your quest :)

I also wanted to publicly acknowledge Swipe79 and SSsportsCARDS for donating money for the mission trip. Thank you both!

Truly, everyone - thank you. This has been fun, but the fun does not stop here. www.TheMouschiCode.com is something I made for everyone to give a shot at just for fun! Once the winner of the rip card gets his shot at it, I'll let everyone else in.

Have a good evening, everyone, thanks for playing and keep your eyes peeled when the Mouschi Code is open to you!

[mouschi]

My wife and son leave for their trip on Thursday, so I thought I'd just give an update on the whole money raising part. I had about 6 people buy the mini blue/red autographs of me, which was very nice of them. I even had 2 people donate some money from the forums!

My wife decided to do a massive garage sale, and asked some friends/family members if they had any junk to donate for us to sell.

Yeah, they did.

We ended up getting a boat load of stuff. People came through in a huge way. While I was very thankful for the donated items, I was worried about the amount of stress it would cause just listing everything.

We stayed up in the garage last night until around 2am and were pretty much out on our feet by bed time. Our neighborhood isn't very well trafficked for this kind of thing, so our expectations were low. To help traffic though, I went ahead and posted it on about 7 websites.

By our calculations, we had $637 left to raise for their part. (We still are responsible for about $500 to contribute to the "pot" to pay for the building materials / furniture for the house.) We had done a few other fund raising garage sales and the last one ended up bringing in about $150 or so which was great.

http://www.mycollectionofcards.com.php5-20.dfw1-2.websitetestlink.com/baseballcards/072515/20150725_091503.jpg

7am came early, and we feverishly started putting things out. Before I even had time to litter the freeway and our neighborhood with our garage sale signs, people were checking out what we had.

By 8:30am, we were already sweat soaked because it was so hot and humid. At the end of the day, we filled up the cardboard mobile (the name I affectionately call our minivan thanks to my several excursions picking up card collections) and packed it to the brim (not joking - I'm surprised I fit in the driver seat!), then dropped the leftovers off to "Resale with a Purpose".

When I came back, we dumped all the money on the floor and counted it as a family. Keep in mind the part to pay for my wife and son was $637 (I actually didn't know this exact dollar until after the fact.) We ended up selling $645.55!

Needless to say, we are very happy and will be going out for a victory burger later. We still have about $500 left to go, but I would classify this as a miracle - that is a lot of money from a garage sale! God is good all the time, but He was especially good to us today!