Revisiting this topic from a few weeks ago, but with a twist.
https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=341118
Had something kinda sorta similar happen to me just this week, and after I bought it, I thought of this earlier thread.
For those of you who love to malign eBay, this very situation is one of the key reasons as why I’m on eBay, and typically check my saved searches several times each day.
So just the other day, I got a hit on one of my eBay searches for a rare Mays piece that I’ve been questing for, and questing pretty hard for the last several years. It’s the 1960 Mays Bazooka Complete Box. Only one other is known to exist. According to my sources, the one other that was previously known sold pre-pandemic in a private transaction for $15K.
For those not familiar with the 1960 Bazooka complete box issue, Howard wrote an extensive and emotional screed about his 30-year quest to find a Clemente copy here:
https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=286980
From what I understand, the one other Mays copy previously known to exist came from the same collection from which Howard purchased his Clemente. I’ve never actually seen the Mays that sold previously, but I suspect it was in better condition than this one. This one on eBay was pretty beat up. But when you’re talking about a piece this rare, condition isn’t nearly as important, because you’ll pay handsomely just to get any copy.
Cutting the other way, the one I found on eBay was for 25 pieces of gum, whereas the other known copy was for “only” 20 pieces of gum. Among the Bazooka cognoscenti, 25 is often rarer and more desirable than 20. Plus any mathematician worth their salt will readily confirm that 25>20.
As somewhat of a pricing analog, several months ago, I purchased a very similar Mays Bazooka Complete Box, but from 1959. Only two of that piece are known to exist, and I paid well into 5 figures for it in a private transaction. The 1959 Complete Box that I purchased was also in pretty rough shape, but better than the one I was looking at on eBay.
So when this one popped up on eBay for $250, I just about spit out my Pepsi. After a few frantic moments verifying that the seller hadn’t mislabeled it, and then making a quick check to ensure that the seller wasn’t just some scammer, I pulled the trigger.
Obviously, valuation on something this obscure can be difficult, since the issue is not well known, and the number of collectors who are into complete bazooka boxes tends to be limited, such that there might only be a few dozen people who are interested and willing to pay a mountain of cash for it. But $250 is a serious bargain. The odds are solid that it’s worth AT LEAST $2,500, and some might argue that estimate needs another zero. Regardless of your valuation, $250 is a major steal, at least 90% below market, and potentially a whole lot more. As I was budgeting for this item, in the off chance it ever came along, I was planning to pay well into 5 figures, so there’s that as well. And if it was in an auction with another motivated bidder, it’s hard to guess when one of us would finally stop bidding like drunken sailors on shore leave. But we definitely wouldn’t stop at $250.
Based on the earlier post, some have suggested that they would inform the seller that it’s worth more, and would take the time to negotiate a price that is more fair. While that might work in the context of a garage sale or a card show, it’s a lot more clunky over eBay with a buy it now price. Trying to convince the seller to let me pay him more would have been folly. While I was busy corresponding with the seller, someone else would almost certainly have snapped it up, with a plan to resell it to me or someone like me at something closer to market. It’s certainly happened before with other items! By trying to be a gentleman, the odds would rise dramatically that I would just end up gifting a large sum of cash to someone else who was less worried about buying it for a bargain. So that wasn’t really an option.
I’m also not going to sell it anytime soon, so it’s not like I’m going to flip it for a big profit. It’s going to be one of the Crown Jewels of my collection and sit right there for the next few decades. So it’s not like I have a big pot of cash coming to me that I can split with the last seller.
I suppose if I wanted to be magnanimous, I could go back to the seller and find a way to send him some more cash. However, as others have noted in the previous thread, that seems like asking for trouble, as the seller might just demand a whole lot more, or decide to stir up all sorts of trouble.
Since context seemed to be important to many of the posters in the previous thread, from what I can tell, the seller is probably a small time dealer, although maybe not a serious full-time dealer. It’s impossible to know the backstory here, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he picked it up for $50 from someone who liquidated their small collection, and was really quite happy to flip it to me for $250. Obviously he didn’t realize what he had, and probably still doesn’t, unless the speed at which it sold makes him wonder whether he should have asked for more, and he decides to go back and do some digging. So by going back to the seller, I would likely cause more angst than by just leaving it alone. Then again, maybe I’m just rationalizing my way into saving myself some solid cash today so that I can spend it on a 1961 Mays complete box, if one ever comes along, since that is the only complete bazooka box now missing from my collection (PSA pop: 0).
So there you go. Clearly some different facts than in the French/Gabonese case. But I guess now we know how I responded when faced with this situation.
Would you have acted differently?