Is there an item in your collection that you just hate looking at for some reason?

[marvymelvin]

Is there an item or items in your collection that you just hate looking at for reasons only known to you? Maybe you have a bad taste in your mouth because of how the deal went down. Maybe you settled for something in less condition to save a few bucks. Card is off-centered?? Maybe you paid way too much for it. Maybe you paid a lot, but didn't look close enough and got burned on a retouch, unseen/undisclosed crease or mark. Maybe you bought some cards from a seller who is/was or turned out to be a total jerk. Maybe you used your credit card to buy it like 5 years ago and are still making payments on that charge ($500 turned into $5000).

I am sure there are many reasons. Sometimes I feel like I am the only one who is soft and gets taken advantage of.

I was conversing with a fellow board member the other and he said something very interesting. He said he recently went through his collection and got rid of all of the items/cards that had bad "joojoo" and replaced them with an exact example from a good source/honest seller.

I have had many examples of this in my years of collecting, and have had anxiety over a lot of deals. But then I realized I could just change my way of looking at things. I decided to consider my purchases from jerk wads with bad memories as me "saving" the item from a life of hell with a total jerk. It was like I was adopting them from a bad owner and giving them a nice cozy place in my curio cabinet. In know this might sound a bit strange, but I am not crazy. Just a tad eccentric. And a Therapist by trade. Hey it works for me, maybe it can work for you.

I am interested in your stories. What are some items you have owned that you hated to look at for one reason or another. You don't have to mention names as I want this to be therapeutic. As mentioned I am a Marriage and Family Therapist by trade. I often help people in distress about their past by helping them "reframe" the way they look at things. So welcome to my couch, sit down and tell me what worries you. The doctor is in!

[RGold]

[Econteachert205]

I sell it as soon as it reaches that point

[Steve D]

Anything related to the 1984 or 1998 World Series, or the 1995 Super Bowl

Steve

[MacDice]

For me it's a signed 1957 Clemente that I paid 750 for 15 years ago that is not authentic

[swarmee]

The items that I disobeyed a direct order from my wife not to buy. Luckily, I have sold one (at 200% profit) and the other is going on loan to a museum. So they won't be in the house to make her give me funny looks.

[Shoebox]

10 years back I bid on what I initially thought was 1954 Topps Richie Ashburn. Realized after it was an SI Preview magazine cutout. Only wasted about $15 on it but it aggravates me to know I got hooked. I keepnt because it is Richie Ashburn and as a reminder not to be an idiot.

[EvilKing00]

Have dozens of barry bonds rookies and 100's of bonds other cards. Ugh- i guess i dont need to explain y i hate looking at them

[campyfan39]

The presidents cards in the 56 set

[Koufax32fan]

1979 rookie Pedro Guerrero - I traded a 1960 Duke Snider for it - rookie cards were all the craze!

1957 Willie Mays that is trimmed (I need to upgrade that one at some point, but what to do with a trimmed card).

[Centauri]

I collected Topps football and baseball from the store in 1986. I was a kid, and no one was interested in football. Well, except this one older kid who took pity on me, and was willing to take the crappy football cards off my hands in trade for a "nice" stack of really old baseball cards. Yes, they were commons, but look how old! One was from 1974!

I traded about 500 86 Topps football for a stack of maybe 15 70's baseball cards, the best player was a 75 Dusty Baker. Condition wise, we are talking maybe half would achieve a grade above "A". There were 3 Jerry Rice rooks in the football cards, along with a ton of other good stuff.

I still have those beat to heck baseball cards. I despise them, but keep them as a reminder.

As a postscript, since the market collapsed, the value of those football cards has dropped from several hundred dollars to maybe $50, so much of the sting is gone. Nevertheless...

[Rollingstone206]

...

[wolf441]

I have a case of 1987 Topps baseball that I bought from a card shop in the spring of '87 when I was 16. We all thought that McGwire, Canseco, Cory Snyder, Oddibe McDowell, Will Clark, etc...were going to be worth a mint!

I think it cost a little over $200.00 and I had saved up the money I made working after school at grocery store. I remember sitting in my room and sorting them into sets (I still have about 10 sets sitting in my mom's attic collecting dust).

The store that I bought them from in Hyde Park, MA also sold T206's and I think they were about $5.00 each. I could have had about 40 of them!

There as no thought to backs, etc. I had bought two during another trip to the store and picked up a Tolstoi McGraw and an American Beauty Bresnahan for $10.00.

[PowderedH2O]

About 16-17 years ago, I was going through a divorce and working three jobs to make ends meet while going to college full time. I was collecting Olympics autographs pretty hard and a guy had a signed photo of boxer Jose Torres and I won it for about 15 bucks I guess. This was before paypal, so I sent out a check. The day after I mailed the check my ex hit me up for some child support/alimony issue and I was out $600. For a guy delivering pizza and working at Burger King, $600 was the equivalent of a million dollars. So, needless to say, my little check to the guy for the Jose Torres was no good. I got an email from the guy basically calling me the most worthless piece of crap that ever walked the face of the earth and that he was taking me to court, blah blah blah. Anyway, we agreed that I would send him a money order plus $25 for his inconvenience to make it right. I got the Jose Torres photo shortly thereafter. To this day, I hate that picture. I don't even remember the seller's name at this point, but I remember how crappy he made me feel, and when I got the photo it wasn't fun to own. I still have it, and it is buried somewhere in my stuff.

[ls7plus]

Originally Posted by EvilKing00

Have dozens of barry bonds rookies and 100's of bonds other cards. Ugh- i guess i dont need to explain y i hate looking at them

I have a feeling that you need not feel too bad about Bonds' cards in the long run (hopefully they include a stack of his 1986 Topps Traded Tiffany rookies in "9" or better, though, which had a print run of 5,000). My prediction is that the HOF will soon elect at least one player who will indisputably later be discovered to have been a heavy steroid user. There is no mechanism in place for ejecting such players from the Hall once they are in. Then, enough people will buy into the notion that if these guys are in, there is no justification for keeping the likes of Bonds, McGwire and Sosa out. Might be best to hang in there long term with Bonds. Just a feeling I have.

Best of luck,

Larry

[Sean]

The Cobb I bought, sight unseen, from a dealer in 2002, when I was just beginning to collect. It's obvious to me now that its trimmed.

The Westlake was part of the Harris collection. I wanted a piece of that set, but now I think that this one is also trimmed.




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[ls7plus]

With respect to the initial question posed by this thread, I have a 1947 Tip Top Bread Johnnie Mize that fits that bill. I am a Mize fan, and a lot of baseball fans don't realize how truly good he was. I personally consider Bill James' stat of runs created per 27 outs, compared to league average, on a career basis to be the best yardstick to measure a player's offensive ability. By my recollection, only seven or eight pre-steroid era players have produced more than 200% of the league average runs created for their entire careers: Williams, Ruth, Mantle, Gehrig, Cobb, Jackson, and Hornsby are the ones I recall. I believe Musial to be next at 193%, then followed by Mize at 188%. In addition, had he not missed 3 years of his prime due to service in WWII, he would have likely ended up with somewhere around 450-480 career HR's, and a .315-.320 batting average (as it was, he ended up at .312). Also, his OPS+ was 156 (equal, I believe, to Willie Mays), and his lifetime on-base percentage was .398. I wanted the '47 Tip Top badly, because it represents his best power season: 51 HR, 138 RBI, and 137 runs scored, with a .302 average.

However, the card is in poor condition, with a couple of wrinkles and vertical lines (not quite creases) where the paperboard has begun to separate (perhaps due to prolonged sunlight exposure?). Although the ebay scan accurately depicted the condition of the card, I pulled the trigger anyway, as I had had a saved search for more than one year for it, and this was the only one that had shown up. I really wanted one in graded VG or better, but PSA has only graded a total of 5, and just 4 of those were in that category. Not knowing how long it would take for a more suitable example to appear, I bought it. Since it truly appears to be a tough card, at times I decide to just appreciate it for that and the achievements it represents with respect to Mize's career, but at other times, the decided lack of eye appeal really gets to me, even to the point where I consider it an embarassment to my collection. Sometimes I rationalize that I am giving it a good home, a la Brad above, but at others, really would like to simply get rid of it. It has, however, solidified my approach to collecting with regard to rare "beaters"--don't buy them unless they are really, really rare!

Interesting post,

Larry

[Runscott]

I just received an early 1930's pool cue today which reminded me of a cue I used to have that I absolutely couldn't stand to look at.

The cue belonged to Babe Didrickson who was the greatest female athlete in the world and probably played every sport EXCEPT baseball. She was a world-class billiard player. The pics below show her cue and a similar-age cue that I refinished.

I hated looking at her cue because the old yellow finish combined with the purple wood to create a grey-brown look. But what was so painful was that I knew all it took was a quick refinish to make it blazing purple again - exactly like the one shown in the picture. But you just can't do stuff like that with history.

[clydepepper]

I got a decent price for it, though it was still a lot, and it came back from PSA as having been altered. UGH!

[dabigyankeeman]

I have an early 1920's strip card of The Babe that I badly creased right across the center, almost made two cards out of one when I stupidly tried to move it out of a pocket in a 15-pocket sheet and into another one to get a few Ruth cards together, and since its The Babe I wont get rid of it and its too expensive to replace, but I do get aggravated every time I look at it.

I no longer move cards around in my sheets.

[SMPEP]

My 1963 Pete Rose.

I just realized a couple weeks ago that it is a fake that I bought before I knew better!

Ugh. I guess we've all been burned at some point or another.
Patrick

[T206.org]

Ron, did I originally buy this Titus from you? I can't find a record of it. It must have been 8+ years ago by now?

For whatever it's worth, I sold it at one point, went through quite a bit of trouble over the course of a couple of years, and finally got it back a few years ago. It remains one of my favorite cards in my collection.

Originally Posted by RGold

[CurtisFlood]

Any autograph that has not been approved by the powers that be. Meaning I can never sell said item. At some Point I usually either shred that item or in the case of a baseball give it to my grandson to knock around.

[drmondobueno]

The card shows a drawing of an actor in a baseball uniform. Looks anything but a baseball player. Wont say what it looks like to me. Certainly not Tris. After I bought it I 'found out' the same pose was used by players in the 91A and B sets.

Ugh, but d*^!, the card says Tris Speaker.....