Great thread topic!
Before my days of buying on Ebay, I would buy modern cards every now & then from a gentleman named W.S. Morrell, who ran a mail auction from his home. You had to get on his mailing list and you would receive maybe 10 photocopied sheets of paper with a list of cards up for auction. Each card had a minimum bid and you would have to call and place your bid before the auction ending date.
Now I can't remember the exact reason at this time, but I missed placing a bid before the ending date, so the next day I gave him a call to see if the card sold, which it hadn't. We got talking and I told him that I would wait for his next auction and place a bid. Then he ask me "You've bought from me before?" and I informed him that I had bought cards from him for 2 years now. To which he replied "I'll tell you what, you can have the card now if you want it. How about $100 plus $5 for S&H?" I couldn't reply fast enough!
So a week later my first vintage card arrived and I wasn't home. I drove up & down the streets looking for my mailman while holding that pickup slip like it was the winning lottery ticket. Three streets later I found him and claimed my prize. It was a SGC 84 1961 Topps Mickey Mantle MVP card.
Sorry for the long version, but I wanted to build some suspense.
Do I still own it? Nope, sold it about 3 years ago to buy more T206s. Oh well, I enjoyed it for over a decade and now someone else is enjoying it.
Thanks for bringing back some good memories.
Jantz