I have not posted this in a pickup thread yet, but it's my happy story of 2016 so far as sportscards go.
When I was a boy back in 1978, I bought a set of 100 Grand Slam baseball cards. They came with an address list and you would write the players, all of whom had agreed to sign the cards. I probably did about 60 of them before I discovered girls, but I got DiMaggio, Musial, Joe Wood, Rube Marquard and tons of other good names.
Last year I was reorganizing my collection and found them. My first though was that it would be fun to complete the set, but I was missing several that were very difficult. I also discovered that a second set of 100 had been issued.
Anyway, I poked around and found a seller of some of them so we corresponded. As there was a decent amount of money involved and autographs are often forged, I decided to do some googling on the seller.
Turned out it was Jack Wallin, former Donruss photographer and original publisher of the set. We have worked out a deal and i will soon have a complete autographed set of 200 in its glorious black and white graininess (including the Walberg and McQuinn, both of whom died shortly after the set came back from the printer) and a reconnection to the days I sat in my room in Dickson, WV, writing letters to baseball legends.
While the set is cool, I have also enjoyed getting to know Jack very much. He has great stories about the players he had photographed and his travels. I suspect we will remain friends for a long time.
Did I pay a little more than I could have? I'll never know. But I am sure that I feel like I got a great value in the friendship I gained through the negotiations.
In our search to acquire small pieces of cardboard, it is often lost that we are also collecting friendships and connections with other collectors. Maybe that's the point.
|