Posted By:
martindlAh, the hunt and the good ole days of Ebay.
The most memorable was a Victor Batwing Football noseguard in absolutely perfect condition, though without the headband. This was in the very early days of Ebay, about 12 years ago, back when pictures weren't with the listings and even having the technology to email a picture was a major ordeal. The fellow selling it had 'Noseguard' in the title and the description said something to the effect of "I'm not sure what this is but I think its for boxing. Made of black rubber". Cost me $30 including postage. Its long gone now.
Ebay back in the day was awesome for finds. The search function brought back everything that included your word, even if that word was part of another e.g 'ball' would give you 'baseball' 'football' 'basketball' 'ballerina' 'ballistics' etc. If you searched for 'baseball' you could go through every listing in about an hour, because there were only about 500-600 lots in total and there was all manner of superb things. I remember being very sore about losing a presentation bat from 1889 because my computer froze at the last minute. It went for $56. I offered the winner $300 for he and he rightly ignored my email.