Around the same time as Barry's story (actually, 1997 or so), my wife and I were cleaning out the garage shortly after we had moved to a new city. In one of the moving boxes was a shoebox of Strat cards from the 1976, '77 and '78 seasons. I literally tossed the box in the garbage can but then thought that it wouldn't cost much to sell them on eBay, so I might as well try.
I sorted through all the teams (replacing brittle, old rubberbands along the way) and figured out that two seasons were complete and the other was missing maybe 10 players or so. This was in the early days of eBay, so I didn't have a lot of experience with how things can get crazy in the final minutes of an auction. I had a hint that there was a lot of interest based on the number of e-mails I received, but I wasn't prepared so see the price go from less than $50 to more than $400 in the span of the final 15 seconds. Man, that was fun.
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