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.
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