The biggest one you let get away?

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Posted By: Paul Muchinsky

I greatly enjoyed seeing all the wonderful items in the top items added to collections in 2007. I can appreciate their beauty and charm even if I don't collect that type of material. That post led me to think about the flip side, the biggest one you ever let get away. I have mine. It was 1962 and I have the pinback bug fully thriving within me. I took the train to NYC and cruised an area where there were actual junk shops that sold all manner of odd-ball items. Before very long (within just a few years)the rising rents would drive all of them out of business. In one of these little shops I asked if they had any baseball items. They did. I bought a few pins (PM10s) for $1-$2 per pin. I was shown a big stack of those cards from 1914/1915 that have red backgrounds. The stack was about two inches high. They cost 75 cents per card, and I said I wasn't interested because I didn't collect cards. Then I was shown a "special" item that was not kept with the other (cheaper) items. It was a World Series press pin of the 1920 Dodgers. I hemmed and hawed. It was a pin, but not a stadium pin. The price for that one item exceeded the total cost I had spent on the stadium pins. The price was $10. I passed. I don't collect press pins, but I subsequently learned I had walked away from a good deal. Please don't tell me what it is worth today. Maybe it is a blessing I didn't buy it, because I probably would have felt the urge to "complete the set".

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Posted By: Jim

Mine was a Baseball Magazine Premium of Grover Cleveland Alexander. It was the larger type size piece, ~12 x 21". Passed on it about 10 years ago and have not seen one since. The search continues!

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

The one I still kick myself over was a letter and envelope with a colorful letterhead and a neat design on the envelope for the Nebraska Indians baseball team...the contents of the letter had to do with a team of Japanese ballplayers that Guy Green put together in 1908. The letter was to an Illinois newspaper and detailed the time/price..et cetera of the upcoming game. An early news release.

It was before I used a sniper program on ebay and I kept going back and forth with one other ebayer all week up to $750 and then quit. He wasn't using a snipe program either because I would get the high bid and then he would get it back an hour or so later.

I'll probably never see anything like it again.

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Posted By: Brock G.

nm

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Posted By: mike rothstein

Hi Paul

Mine was an autographed 1908 copy of Take Me Out to the Ballgame by Jack Norworth.

I set a snipe too low.

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Posted By: Steve Murray

Mine has to be passing on an Ullman Henry Mathewson that Andy Baran offered me for $200 about ten years ago.

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Posted By: Clint

A dealer friend told me about a Ty Cobb bat that a man had displayed in a shoe store. He said he offered him some money for it but he didn't want to sell it. I thought about checking it out but never did. A few months later another guy I know bought the bat for $1000. It sold for $40,000 in a Mastro auction a couple years later. I wouldn't have felt right about it anyway as I couldn't afford what would have been a fair offer.

Clint

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Posted By: George Dreher

In 1969 at an estate sale in New York City, was one of the few times I didn't have enough funds to purchase what must have been the bat Ruth used to hit the called shot in the 1932 World Series. Ruth had signed the bat "To Eddie, Game 3 HR 1932 WS" and according to the letters and documents accompanying the bat, it was given to the crippled former Yankee batboy Eddie Bennett by Ruth after the game ended. When Bennett died way back in the mid 30s, the man whose estate sale I attended, ended up with it.
To this day, I have never heard of it resurfacing.

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Posted By: brock

I believe hunts sold the bat that the Babe used to hit the called shot against the Cubs.

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Posted By: George Dreher

Brock, I'm surprised I didn't hear about that. The only called shot item I ever heard of being auctioned was his uniform. Heard about other 1932 Ruth bats being auctioned, but never "the bat".

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Posted By: bruce Dorskind

1. 1887 Old Judge Advertising Sign- (lew Neman) $5000 in 1981

2. Mint Cracker Jack Advertising Poster (Lifson) 1983 $20,000

3, Sol White's Colored Baseball (near perfect copy-book dealer) $2500 in 1976

4. Tuxedo Tobacco Sign Walter Johnson (Ken Felden) $3000 in 1982

5. Anson and Ewing Beer Advertising Sign- underbidder in Auction $23,000


and that was only the beginning


Bruce Dorskind
America's Toughest Want List

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Posted By: boxingcardman

So I won't bother mentioning underbids or non-bids. However, the two that stick out in my mind because they were such bone-headed moves happened at last year's National. I saw a stack of 1918 Zeenuts on a table, looked for O'Doul, didn't find him, and didn't bother to find out what the stack cost. Another board member purchased the lot at a fraction of its value; I was there first but didn't even thing to ask how much. Another table, I saw two rare backed candy cards at perhaps 1/10 of their value but didn't bother to buy them because I really don't collect them.

I nearly did the same thing in Cleveland in 2004. I didn't pull the trigger on a Jim Thorpe card I wanted and didn't bother to note the dealer's table numbers. I spent a frantic hour searching for the table but lucked out that time and was able to get the card.

It doesn't help to get early admission to the show if you don't pull the trigger on the items you see...

Sic Gorgiamus Allos Subjectatos Nunc

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Posted By: brock

George
I went back and looked through their auctions and i guess they did not sell it. Sorry about that.

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Posted By: Greg Theberge

For baseball, it was part of the same lot that Dan posted in the McGreevy's 3rd Base thread (lot #865 bottom right corner - the exterior photo of Nuf Ced's original liquor store). A fellow collector friend was to bid on this lot and we were going to split it. He really wanted the upper right photo (I wouldn't have minded it either) and I really wanted the lower right photo. Something happened and we didn't win it. Oh well. He ended up getting some other nice lots and so did I (and we didn't end in the poor house at the end of the morning) so all's well. Does anyone know who won this lot by the way?

That one hurt for only a little bit. There was once an incredible Narragansett beer tin sign (c.1900) that we had the opportunity to buy back about 25 years ago. We passed on it at $1500 (back then a lot of cabbage for a sign). Am constantly reminding my dad how we blew that one. We did manage to get it photographed for our book though - which constantly reminds us how we blew it every time we look at it.

Of course, there are other missed opportunities ou there, but no major regrets based on the price (just missed a nice 1912 Red Sox pin in the last Hunt's auction as a matter of fact).

Greg

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Posted By: Jerry Spillman

Joe V, a Connecticut dealer, stopped at my NSCC table (this was 20 plus years ago) and said he had a poster for sale. He was asking $30000. I collect advertising pieces but the price was out of my category. But at least I got a picture of it while he held it down. I wonder where it is today?

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Posted By: Mark Steinberg

Bruce:

Looks like you'll get another crack at the Ewing/Anson Beer Sign... REA has one in their coming auction. Looks to be a pristine example. Maybe you can even get it for under 6 figures! Best of Luck!

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Posted By: Tom Hufford

In the early 1970s, while I was in college, I bought T206s from the legendary Wirt Gammon, of Chattanooga. He charged me 35 cents each, regardless of player. I'd send him some money, he'd put the cards in one of those old metal Band-Aid containers, and send me the appropriate number of cards. If there were any that were duplicates of cards I already had, I'd send them back, and Wirt just sent some more. I completed the entire T206 set, except for about 6-7 cards this way.

Midway through my T206 quest, Wirt told me that he had one of the T206 Honus Wagner cards that he would sell me if I were interested. His price - $500! That was more than I made in a year at my part-time job, and was more than a year's college tuition, (and that $500 would have bought a lot more 35 cent cards) so I passed. Wirt then offered the card to my good friend Bill Haber, and since Bill had a job and an income (he worked for Topps), he grabbed it, and completed his set. After Bill's death in 1995, I know his collection was sold, and I have no idea where that card is today. If anyone out there has it and is interested in selling, I'll be glad to pay at least double the old $500 price!