The one that got away--what's yours?

[nolemmings]

I was sifting through some unorganized clutter in my scan folder and stumbled across an auction from 7 1/2 years ago that still haunts me. I had not been collecting m101s all that long and was focusing on m101-4, so I, like everyone else, let this one go without a bid:

Here's a scan of the card in that auction:


That very same card, a scarce shortprint, sold for $8000.00 last October in the Legendary Auction. A $90 investment in 2003 would have returned nearly 90 fold. Excuse me while I go cry some more. Anybody else have a horror story?

[mrvster]

ooooo so so many....

so many rare t206 backs to list, errors......
i feel you pain....a triple stamped sweet cap back real cheap, and many others....oh well,I can't be greedy
Peace

Johnny

[steve B]

Yeah, way too many.

T206 drum in VG I saw at the shriners show for 250. I had the money, but didn't want to walk in buy one card and leave.

Probably 4 or 5 Ruth or Gehrig Goudeys in vg-ex. When I was hanging out at halls after school they'd hand me the cards and tell me I should buy them. Usually they were $100. I really should have bought one.

Same with a Red Sox 1912 WS pennant $100! I've never seen another.

Instead I spent my savings on a couple semesters of college.
I'm still friends with the guys I met there, so it all worked out for the better


Steve B

[Exhibitman]

I was just thinking about this yesterday. What I most regret is not buying a T206 Wagner when I could have afforded one. Within a year after I started working I'd saved enough to have bought one for what they were going for at the time. Unfortunately, I bought a lot of stupid crap instead--condo, furniture, car.

[wolfdogg]

In the late 90s I located and could have bought a T210-8 Joe Jackson for under $10K in probably Gd-VG or so condition...................If I had done my homework and found it was one of only a handful known I would have bought it.......Oh well, Life goes on......with a swift kick in the "" every time I get in and out of the shower

[Vegas-guy]

Hello everyone! First post but been lurking for a while. Back in 2000 when I was really into T206s I was offered a PSA 3 Plank for 15k but passed so I could buy the other two Cobbs's I needed to have all 4 in PSA 6..

[Jeff Price]

I had a gentleman selling me some carmels and cracker jacks. Would only sell me his extras. I did buy a 1914 Jackson and lots of others but he only had one Mathewson. It was nice as most graded 3-6. He had close to a complete set that he said he would sell next time. Next time never happened. 10 years later I still think about his cards and how there sitting raw in a drawer somewhere.

[novakjr]

It's not exactly the one that got away, but I remember a purchase that I passed on at a show in the fall of '96 that's always kinda pissed me off. At that time I was still a very amateur collector(well, I'm still pretty amateur compared to most on this board). Anyways, my collection was still all modern, and I still thought that my '85 Topps Cory Snyder was the greatest card ever, well, that and my '82 Topps Rusty Kuntz. At that point I had probably about $30 on me. That was a lot for me at the time, since I was still just 15. Well, at about the third or fourth table I come to there is stack of '85 Topps Mark McGwire cards. Keep in mind, I didn't have this card yet, and he was down in his career, so the card wasn't really all that important at the time. The dealer had around a dozen of them, and wanted $3.50 each, or the lot for $30. I passed and ended up buying a '93 Select Young Stars Drew Bledsoe instead. The fact that Drew is still my favorite football player ever(and this is one of his most expensive rookie cards) is probably the only thing that's kept me calm in all of this.

Anyways, fast forward to the Summer of '98. At this point, I really wasn't collecting anymore. I'm in Fargo ND for the Junior National Freestyle wrestling tournament, and we had some time off, and a few of us took the bus to the mall. And while walking the mall, I see a card shop with a nice display window in the front, so I check it out. Right there in the middle of the display is a '85 McGwire for $350, and I later find out that people were ACTUALLY paying that much for 'em. Kicked myself in the ass hard.

I'm not so much mad that I didn't have the card, and I've attained one pretty easily and affordably now. BUT damn, I could've made a lot of money had I bought that lot instead of the Bledsoe.

[Peter_Spaeth]

A stunning NM/MT Wilson Franks Ted Williams, at a card shop in Boston in the 1990s, for a fraction of what it would be worth today. Just couldn't pull the trigger.

[Steve D]

Back in 2003 or 2004, a PSA graded T206 Plank showed up on ebay. For the first and so far only time in my life, I had the money to be competitive. I ended up as the under bidder just a bit over $16K

Steve

[leftygrove10]

I have a few that haunt me.... Probably the biggest one is not bidding more on a PSA 5 1933 Butter Cream Grove with the Sept 1 back that sold for $500 in 2003... Someone had bid $498 and someone had bid $500 sometime before the auction ended. I saw the bids and had time to bid the next increment to win it, but couldn't pull the trigger. Ugh! Eight years later I am still looking for this card!!!!!

[JasonD08]

Todd-

You will have another chance at the rare blank back version of Wallace in this springs REA auction. Also Cady and Becker as well. Never seen these EVER in blank backs.

[bcornell]

There was a Leland's auction about 10 years ago with a group of D381 Fleischmann's that included Wagner. It went late and I flinched when it hit $10K. David Bryan won it and the Wagner eventually wound up in a moderator's collection... perhaps you've seen scans of it 8 or 9 times now on this forum. I get mild stabbing pains when I see it again. That will always be my single biggest collecting wuss-out


Bill

[Wite3]

I have told this story a few times...at the National in Anaheim in I think '96 (the same year they showed off the PSA Gretzky Wagner...which is a whole other story from that same National)...I was standing near Kit Young's table and was handed a deck of playing cards and told that they were probably one of a kind. I asked if I could rifle through them and write down all the Phillies in the deck. Carefully opened the deck and wrote down all the Phillies on the back of my wantlist at the time and handed the deck back. I was told I could have several of the Phillies at $100 or so apiece. I turned it down.

The deck was the Allegheny card deck. This is the one purchase that haunts me constantly. I still hope to buy one someday but alas...

Joshua

PS At least I still have that old wantlist with the cards written on the back as a reminder.

[MattyFan]

I bought a T206 Cobb (bat off shoulder) raw. I saw it would grade about a 4 (it did), and the coin dealer I bought it from wanted 500 for it. He also had a Cobb (bat on shoulder) same grade and I could have had both for 900. I passed on it. I wince when I think about it.

[ls7plus]

My basic vote goes with Adam--could have afforded a T206 Wagner one time in my life, shortly after getting out of law school, renting housing from a friend, giving me low overhead living expenses, in the late '70's. Unfortunately, while I had collected baseball cards through my early teenage years, at this point in my life, I was a lot more interested in putting substantial sums of $$$ into building and street racing some very fast big block Corvettes on Friday and Saturday nights on Telegraph Ave.--The adrenalin still flowing through an ex-athlete, you know. With what I put into those two Corvettes, probably could have purchased a couple of Wagners! Had a lot of fun street racing,though I'd rather have the $250 K + now, or even keep the card, knowing it was mine to sell if and whenever I wanted to.

The M101 Ruth in NMt-Mt, as I've posted before, escaped me at the Strongsville, Ohio show in the early '90's. A dealer there had both a raw NMt-Mt specimen, and one much rougher, grading fair to good. Unfortunately, he wanted $7,000 for the NMT-Mt Ruth, and I had only $5,000 to spend, and he wasn't about to make that deal. Reluctantly, I settled for the example in fair to good for much less. Several months ago, I advised the wife that a NMt-Mt M101 Ruth had sold for $140,000, at which time she advised that she would have given me the extra $2000 needed to procure the higher graded example. Hah! Hindsight is 20/20--the trick would have been to come up with the added cash then, and that would have been unlikely. The wife doesn't like the Babe; she likes the $140,000!

I can sympathize with Daryle too--that T210 Joe Jackson is such an enticing, almost impossibly rare card!

I hope you guys know what these recollections mean--try to learn to recognize the $100,000 + card well before it gets to $100,000 +! There are those still out there; still in process. Think rare, significant and the best condition you can find or afford!

Larry

[LanceRoten]

easy. late 1985, my Dad took me to a card show. One dealer I remember well, had some 54, 55, and 56 Topps. The Ernie Banks rookie was, wow, had to have been Nr Mint. And the 55 Clemente was in awesome shape. He was willing to sell the PAIR for $150. Now remember, this is Oct 1985. Against my Dad's wishes, I went instead with a lot of smaller rookies. Winfield, Yount, Brett, couple of 84 Donruss Mattingly's. Seems like I got a 80 T Henderson also. Seems like the Brett was the highest $$$ of those I got, and even it was only $20 or so. But boy, do I regret not taking my dad's advice. Especially since it was his money lol

[bbeck]

I believe it was 1976 at the Hotel Aspen, Parsippany New Jersey. A dealer had exactly 2 pages of 1952 Topps Mantles, 6 or so per page. He told my dad and I we could have any one of our pick for $100 per. I can't remember the condition but I know they were not beaters. Probably Ex or Ex/Mt. We looked at each other like he was crazy and smiled. The most I had ever spent on a card was $35 and that was for a Goudey Ruth! This was just a Mantle. I sure wish I knew how to build a flux capacitor.

[deadballera]

these stories happen repeatedly with all of us....and too many times.


Fortunately...there are times when we get something a fraction of what we would pay for it.