What's your most shrewd pick-up ever?

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Posted By: E, Daniel

Maybe the card cost 10 cents at a garage sale, $10,000 at auction on Mastro, or anything in between. Maybe it was mis-identified and you saw the potential, or it was a card from an issue whose time had not yet come, or it was horribly mis-graded and you had it bumped enormously and added thus to its value by a factor.........
Whatever you think, as long as we are talking about investment return on the card, whether sold long ago, today, or in the future, and perhaps just a short story on how you came upon it?

I believe mine will turn out to be an 1887 Old Judge Cap Anson in street clothes GAI Authentic on Ebay, that didn't make reserve going on 2 years ago and I picked up privately for around $1200-$1500, can't remember exactly.
Appearance is nrmt, strong image, slightly slightly trimmed on the bottom edge, still, not many around in the scheme of things......


Oh, and Leon's can't be the Trucker Boy Wagner!

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Posted By: Frank Wakefield

$10 paid in cash for a T200 Fatima premium of Cleveland. It is in really bad shape, border broken and some bits missing. The image broken but put back together well enough. This is the 21" x 13" premium, not the small ones. Joe Jackson is as tall as your hand.

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Posted By: steve f

T205 Marquard for $50 a year ago. It was a new eBay seller with a 16 color scan that made it look like a poor counterfeit. I had a good feeling about this seller. Luckily, it graded SGC 60

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Posted By: Keith

This isn't prewar by any means, but I picked up a Peyton Manning game used helmet (an upper deck redemption) from a baseball card shop in Trenton NJ for around $300. Sold it 2 weeks later on ebay for around $1600.

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Posted By: peter ullman

i picked up a t206 w/drum back in the mid 90's for $30 and sold it on ebay 2 years ago for over $1000.

pete in mn

I also have 2 e94's i bought at a national in the 90's for $5 each!

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Posted By: jay behrens

not baseball related, but when I first started getting back into baseball cards 5 years ago, I actually spent most of my money on cards featuring Native American, in particular the N2 and N36 sets. Turned out to be a nice little investment that has funded a large portion of my collection. Sadly, I will never be able to afford to put my collection of N36s together agian. They are just way too expensive now. I used to buy Ex ones for $50. Now you can't touch them for under a couple hundered and Geronimo and Sitting Bull (if you can find this one) will set you back a several grand.

Then agian, if you people around here, my brother and I are pretty good at making shrewd deals on a consistant basis.

Jay

I like to sit outside, drink beer and yell at people. If I did this at home, I would be arrested. So, I go to baseball games and fit right in.

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

1888 Scrapps Comiskey, taken out of a scrapbook that my mother bought at Goodwill for $25.

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Posted By: JimB

I picked up a raw group of mid to high grade raw E93s about ten years ago. Wagner graded PSA 7; Cobb PSA 5; and there were many other 6s and 5s of HOFs in the group. I don't remember the exact cost, but it was less than a third of what I sold the Wagner alone for at auction. Several of the cards are still in my set.
JimB

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Posted By: leon

The Wagner E90-2 was one of over 750 cards in what I call the "Trucker Boy" find. It's been talked about on the board a few times...you can probably find something in a search. I'll spare the gory details. BOTN got in at the BOTN on the deal too..... I named it "Trucker Boy Find" as the person I got them from drove a truck that carried cars.....and there's the thing about the ghost of his grandfather....but that's for another thread or over beers at the National. regards

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Posted By: Jon Canfield

Maybe not my most shrewd pick-up ever but my most recent... In December I purchased a raw E95 Cobb on eBay for around $610. (Would have had it for $200ish if I wasn't bid up $400 in the last second on the auction!) Needless to say, I just got it back from SGC at a 30. So, although it may not be a huge steal, I did get it for a good price.

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Posted By: Glenn

A couple in the past year on ebay. Holland Creameries card in a "mixed tobacco lot" or something like that I won for about $12 total, and the other cards in the lot were probably worth at least $12. And a Bond Bread DiMaggio listed as "old baseball photo" for $6 in February, sold it for $125 in March.

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Posted By: Josh K.

Ive had three that stand out:

An e93 SGC 40 Wagner for 900 last year. I still own mine, but the most recent sgc 40 e93 wagner on ebay sold for $2325;

This lot of 7 e93s (incl. Joss, Lajoie, Waddell, Tinker) from an auction house for around $275 (with one or two exceptions, most were very presentable despite receiving low technical grades). As Ive upgraded, Ive sold off the dooin, lajoie, tinker and waddell for close to $550 alone):


Finally, I won this lot for about $75. After carefully removing all of the cards from the scrap book, I sold most of the commons ungraded for around $20 each; the schang was graded an sgc 80 and then sold for about $85; and the Hoyt graded an sgc 60 and remains in my collection.



(I found out later that one of the blank spots contained a ruth that the seller sold separately - unfortunately, b/c he didnt soak it off the page, he damaged the card during the removal).

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Posted By: David Vargha

My shrewdest pickup was my wife. She's still "hot" after nearly 20 years of marriage and is a really great person. She married me in the mistaken belief that I was going to accomplish alot more than I have so far.

DavidVargha@hotmail.com

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Posted By: Martin Neal

Josh, Those were great pickups!

Last year was very good to me on ebay. I picked up a t206 Shappe variation for $5.00 in a group of two, A t206 Wagner bat on right for $24.00 (has since graded a psa 6).
The best deal other than the T205's (Hobby no stats psa 4 plus 29 others) I picked up last fall) was from a gentleman from Richmond who listed a Cobb bat off on Ebay last summer. He had used a poor photo of the card in his description. It was so blurry, I am sure that is why no one bid at his opening bid. I noticed in his listing he stated he was from central Virginia so I emailed him and said I was from Charlottesville and would like to meet him. The next weekend we met at the Burger King in Zion's Crossroads.
After introducing myself, he pulled out a stack of cards (about 90 cards) from his front pocket. They actually had a rubber band around them. After gently taking the cards from him he told me a pretty incredible story ( it may be a pretty common story). He and other family members had been helping his uncle move out of his house to an assisted living facility and had been cleaning the attic out. At some point, they were in the kitchen when he noticed these cards were in the trash can. He took them out and his uncle said they were his grandfathers and he could have them if he wanted.
I ended up paying $1200.00 for 43 cards, 5 t206s that I did not have in my set including the Cobb which graded vg and a Cy Young glove shows that graded ex. The rest were t205s including a Wallace vg/x, a Rowan vg/x, a Speaker ex, a Wheat ex/mint, A Brown vg/x etc.
He still has about 40 t206s including a ex Mathewson which I am hoping he willl sell soon.

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Posted By: Jason Duncan

I was lucky enough to find a sheet of 18 tobacco cards at a Tristar show in KC. The dealer had them advertised at t206s. He wanted $5 each. These were in P-F condition so for $5 I thought it was a good deal. I negotiated down to $50 plus three $10 vouchers from collectionmonster.com. I didnt think I could go wrong considering there was 2 Crawfords and 2 Bakers in the group. Well, the 18 turned into 20 when I got home because 2 were doubled up in the pages and it turned out these were not t206s, but kottons, minos, victorys, and coupon reverses. I think I made like 3000% on that investment. Ironically, it was the only show I have attended in the last 5 years.


Jason

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Posted By: Jim Rivera

About 3 or 4 years ago I bid on about 6 T206 Carolina Brights that were ending on Easter Sunday. I bid just to watch them because we were going to a family party and I wouldn't be around for the auction end. I won 4 of them, all under $70 each. They all graded 60 or 70 from SGC.

I also picked up a M. Brown with a Piedmont factory 42 on a bin of $100.

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Posted By: Martin Neal

Dad gum it!.. Missed those Carolina Brights

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Posted By: J Levine

Complete vg 1941 Playball set for $300 at a show in Vegas about 2 years ago.

Joshua