The Find that Never Was....

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Posted By: John S

Share your near-miss stories. Here's mine:

My Grandmother lived in the same house her entire life. It was a typical square frame three stroy home with a third floor that was always used as an attic (oh yes...a grandmother's attic story).

She was born in 1916 and was the second oldest of four siblings. Her youngest brother, my Uncle Mike, was born in 1921. He was an avid baseball fan and as early as I can remember he would tell me about his baseball card collection. His descriptions were vivid and once I began to become interested in vintage cards in the mid-80's I realized that he was talking about '33 and '34 Goudeys. He would talk about the multiple Ruth's that he had saved in addition to the sets. Unfortunately my Uncle Mike hadn't seen his collection since he left for the Army in the early 40's. On holidays Uncle Mike and I would go up to the attic to the very spots were he had remembered hiding his collection years ago. We never found anything.

The attic was an ebayer's dream come true. At least three dozen people had lived in the house over the years and all there belongings had been meticulously organized and cared for by my Grandparents. You name it, it was up there...except for the baseball cards.

My uncle passed away in 1994. I would always spend time in the attic trying to search for the cards. His belongings that he had never claimed still were neatly organized in one part of the attic. When my Grandmother passed away in 2004 I was enlisted to clean the attic. As the floor became noticeable (you could literally date the layers of items in the attic) I noticed some plankings that had been deliberately detached and replaced. The cards had to be in the floor! It was the only place that I had never searched. Unfortunately I only unearthed some dry-rotted rubber balls and jacks.

The house was sold in 2005 and the only comfort that I have is that there is no way that the cards are in the attic. They probably were tossed after my Uncle left in the 40's or donated to a paper drive. The hope of a great find kept me searching for almost 25 years.

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Posted By: barrysloate

You should develop that into a short story...I was actually anticipating the resolution, hoping you would find the treasure somewhere!

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Posted By: Matt

Barry - I think the title gave away the suspense

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Posted By: Jodi Birkholm

I remember somebody writing into BCM many years ago with a similar story. The letter was written by a man who grew up in the Eisenhower era. Once the baseball card boom hit, he searched his attic for his collection. He came up empty-handed. He hung his head in regret and was about to exit the attic, when he noticed a gap between the floor boards. He then remembered how he used to spend time playing in the attic on rainy days, and it hit him! For no particular reason, he used to shove his duplicates between the cracks in the floor board. Uprooting one of the planks, he discovered a few fistfulls of dust-laden '55 Bowmans, all in great shape! Luckily for him, he apparently had far too many Campys and Mantles as a kid!

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Posted By: Jim Dale

My favorite from my mother focused on the coin collection her dad built for her and was passed on to me. My grand father rode a horse to San Francisco from Stockton each year in the 1910 to 1916 and picked up "mint sets" of a sort from the SF Mint. He always picked up the year being produced and a year back from his first trip. The last year he picked up was the 1895 set from the SF mint. The next year the delta flooded and he didn't make the trip and then stopped going all together...the next year would have been an 1894 set if it was there (I doubt it would have been considering the number of dimes they made that year (like 20 I think). Dang flood.

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Posted By: Bob

I came back from law school and eagerly went to the two foot lockers in the basement which contained near mint copies of silver age comics runs including Fantastic Four 1-30 and Amazing Spiderman 1-30 along with many, many more. The books had been purchased new in 1961-63. The foot lockers were empty and mom disavowed any knowledge of what happened to them

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Posted By: Phil

I actually have a couple of stories like this, but I'll just explain one of them right now. About a year and a half ago, an elderly gentleman walked into my trophy shop trying to sell me some old trophies he had accumulated. I had no need for them, but as he was leaving my shop he noticed a display case that I sell that holds baseballs. I just had a beat up display baseball in it and he asked me about my ball. I told him it was just a display piece. He then asked if I had any interest in autographed baseballs, I said "yes".
He then explained that he was a butcher in New York city in the 1930s and his company had purchased 3 New York Yankees team signed baseballs from the 1939 season to raffle off to it's employees. He told me he won one of the balls (DiMaggio, Gehrig, Dickey, etc.) but wasn't much of a baseball fan so he said it was still in the original box and still wrapped in the tissue paper it came in. It was "somewhere" in a closet. He asked me if I would be interested in purchasing it. Trying to not sound too excited, I said "sure".
He then muttered that he hoped it was still in his closet and said, "I hope my daughter never got her hands on it over the years..." He told me he would go home and find it and bring it in to me.
That was a year and a half ago..............I guess his daughter did get her hands on it.

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Posted By: David Smith

Two stories about finds that "never were" come to mind.

1) When I started collecting cards back in the late 1970's, I lived in a small town and asked any adult that I knew if they had collected cards when they were younger. Most hadn't. A few said they had but didn't know what happened to their collections. One said he had collected in the 1950's but he had given his cards to his Son's for their collections. Then their was the interim Minister of our church.

He was in his mid to late fifties. He said he had collected cards in the 1930's and had also been given cards his Father had collected when he was a boy. He said he had boxes of cards and that he put them in the attic of his house before he went to fight in WW II.

After he came back from the War, he went up to the attic to store some of his war items and found that his Mother had gotten rid of the cards because 1, she needed the space and 2, since he was a soldier, she thought he was too old and mature to keep his childhood baseball card collection.

2) There is a thrift store that I often go to and there is an 82 year-old man who works there. He stays up front by the cash registers to help answer customer questions and to help the Latino workers out if they have questions or ahve problems with the cash registers. So, most of the time, he has time on his hands to talk.

The things he mostly talks about are his war stories, his stories about being a cop in his Hot Rod Oldsmobile (which he built) and working for his Father as a child and the things he did in rural Pennsylvania back in the old days.

I once asked him if he ever collected baseball cards since he started talking about a ball glove I was buying. He said he collected cards back in the 1930's and that he paid for them by working for his Dad. He said his Dad owned a gas/service station that was located right next to his family's home. He said he would work during the week and then get paid and go into town and buy cards at the drugstore on Saturday's. He said he had a couple of shoe boxes full and that he kept the players organized by teams and stored under his bed.

He too, went off to fight in WW II but instead of his Mother getting rid of his cards, she kept them as something to remember him by just in case.....

Anyway, he said his cards were destroyed when a fire started late at night in the service station and spread to his house. He said his family barely had time to get out of the house and took what little they could grab as they were leaving.

David

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Posted By: barrysloate

Jim- that's a great story about your grandfather's coins, because the San Francisco Mint typically produced smaller quantities of coins than the other mints, hence they are more valuable. But there is no chance that if he purchased an 1894 set, he would have had an 1894-S dime. The general public never got near those coins; certainly they were sneaked out of the mint and given to certain VIP collectors. Even if he purchased the set in the year of issue, it would have been missing the dime.

The 1894-S dime is a legendary rarity, with an auction record of $1.3 million.

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Posted By: Eric

Tbob, man that really sucks. My father had the same thing happen to him with roughly those same runs. Ouch.

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Posted By: Iggy...

In the late 1990's one of my sisters ran into an old friend who she hadn't seen in over 30 years. This lady had recently moved from New York and casually mentioned that she had a bunch of "very old" baseball cards in shoe boxes which she wanted to sell. They belonged to her late brother. My sister, well aware of my addiction, explains the story to me and asked if I was interested. Needless to say, the next weekend I was driving with my sister to the ladies apartment and dreaming of the cards I might find. We arrive at the apartment, and after some salutations, along with some cookies, along with 45 minutes of talking, along with some tea, along with some more talking. She finally digs into the closet and pulls-out four heavy and very old looking shoe boxes. Now, this lady was a talker, so before she hands me one of the boxes I have to hear a bunch of more stories about her past. I'm trying to be polite but my eyes keep focusing on the shoe boxes and the perspiration on my forehead was becoming quite noticeable. I tried to asked her questions about the cards but all she knew was that they were old and valuable. So, finally...after a couple of hours of talking, she hands me the boxes. My heart starts beating one-hundred miles a minute in anticipation.....I opened-up the boxes and........Argh!..........nothing but early to late 1970's baseball and football cards and almost all of them in lower grade. She noticed my disappointment, but I just didn't have the heart to tell her the cards were not worth that much $$$...

Lovely Day...

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Posted By: S Gross

....... knida' fits:

My maternal grandfather was born in 1896, so in 1909-11 he would have been in middle teens. He grew up in Philadelphia in a quite wealthy family, and was 6'6" and a star athelete (high jump, long jump, first base, All-American tight end ((never played basketball -- not really a "sport" according to him))).

So, it is quite realistic to say he bought a few American Caramels and Piedmont cigs, etc., etc. at that time.

The "missed" find was that he died in 1972 when I was 12. Now if he had lived another 10 years or so, and I got "into" cards 10 years or so earlier ............. I would have loved to go up to him with an E90-1 or T206 and said: Remember these ???


..... I think about it every once in a while .....

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Posted By: John S

Barry,

No resolution, but my experience definitely shaped my collecting pursuits; driving me towards vintage cards when most of my friends were buying '84 Topps (I was too, but I was also buying old football and baseball cards whenever I could).

I finally picked up a '33 Goudey Ruth this year. The remote possibility that it once may have belonged to my uncle makes the card a bit more special.

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Posted By: Bob

I remember back in 1981 when Donruss and Fleer appeared to rival Topps, everyone in the world was collecting these sets and "putting away" cases of cards to pay for their kids' college tuition. In those early 80's, I slowly got back in to collecting baseball cards, which I had given up in 1963 when I discovered girls and "cool" things. I remember a guy who we all considered a "nerd" who was buying nothing but caramel cards back then when no one wanted them. There were a few guys buying tobacco cards but NOONE bought caramel cards, the red-headed stepchildren of cards. Eventually I moved on to tobacco cards in the mid 80's and after letting the hobby go again, came back in with a passion, starting all over again in the eary 90's. I didn't buy any caramel cards until about 6-7 years ago and was hooked.
Oh yes, the nerd? He has, he tells me (and he is a really nice guy not a nerd at all) that somewhere in his attic he has complete runs of most of the caramel sets from 1908-1915 including the E99 and E100 sets in beautiful shape. He hasn't gone up there and looked at them for 20 years but he's sure they are still there!!! I have told him time and time again to sell them, now is a good time (relatively speaking) and asked to at least let me see them but he isn't worried and says they aren't going anywhere. I hope an attic fire doesn't hit him or he will be sorrily posting his own thread here about being dense.

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Posted By: Anthony S.

My grandfather was born in Sacramento in 1900. In the 1920's he moved to San Francisco and married by grandmother. They bought a house around 1930 that they lived in until their passing(s) in the early 1990's.

Around 1975-6, when I was 8, my father took me to my first card show. Bought my first three tobacco cards that day, a T206 Mullin and Leifield, both of which looked as if they'd been beaten with a stick every day since 1910, and a Bender felt. That didn't last long. Felts in the hands of an 8 year old have a shelf life of about 4 months, before they magically decompose into sewing thread

Every Sunday, my mom tried to take us to church. I say tried, because she was a late sleeper, and none of the rest of us shared her zeal for salvation, so every Sunday morning was tiptoe and whisper time, with my father watching the 10am pro football game (west coast) on mute. On those occasions she did wake in time, we would stop off at my grandparents house afterwards.

When I told my grandfather about the tobacco cards I'd purchased, he explained that he too had collected cards as a kid and that he was pretty sure there was a shoe box of cards somewhere in the attic. Before he finished the sentence, I was in the attic. It was huge. Four separate rooms, all filled to the gills with boxes. Nobody in my family ever throws anything away. Ever. It's annoying.

I spent the better part of every visit to their house over the next 2-3 years looking for those cards. I did the math. If my grandfather had started smoking when he was 9, there might be a Honus Wagner up there. At some point I migrated to the equally enormous and cluttered basement to continue the hunt. Among the things I did find was a 1917 personal letter on White House stationery from Woodrow Wilson to my great grandfather (they had both been professors). In retrospect, very cool, at the time, so what. But no tobacco cards, no Honus Wagner.

Finally, after 2 or 3 years of tearing their house apart, my grandfather decided that his mother must have thrown them away. I practically had to be restrained.

The cool part is that knowing how excited young boys get about boxes and boxes of old baseball cards, I left all the 1970's cards I collected as kid at my parents house (okay, admittedly that's not the only reason I left them there). We're talking maybe 30,000 cards. So now when my sister swings by my parents' place with her kids, the 10 year old, Lou, immediately races upstairs and cherry picks the cards he wants. He even brings friends along. I've told him he can take any card he wants, but my mother always feels compelled to call me just to make sure. So occasionally, in the middle of the day I'll get a phone call, and my mom will just start saying "Dane Iorg. Willie Wilson. John Montefusco. Ron Cey."

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Posted By: Ricky Y

I don't have any attic stories or long lost relative's stashes.....I just know I saw pre war stuff in the 70's and 80's when it was really cheap and I liked them..but I passed on em so I could collect the modern stuf..oh well...

Ricky Y

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Posted By: dan mckee

This is a very interesting story as my father was born in 1921 and heavily collected the Goudey Indians and Baseball cards. He remembered trading a boy for the Lajoie he couldn't find and he traded a Ruth for a Hugh Critz I believe is the #2 or #3 card and was very tough to get in Hagerstown Maryland. Pop went away to WWII and his lovely wife at the time threw all of them away. Glad that wasn't my mother! Dan.

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

When I was a kid my dad told me that he filled an entire drawer of a dresser with his baseball cards and he said I could have them if I found them. I asked my grandma if she knew where they were and she said she didn't remember them, but my dad said they had to be in the house somewhere. Not long after my dad got cancer and passed away and I didn't think much about the cards anymore. A couple years ago I asked my uncle if I could look around for them...my grandma and grandpa had both passed away and my uncle was still living in the house and he said I could, but I never could find them...I didn't dig too deep though as there were a couple of rooms that were so packed with stuff that there was really no where to move stuff around as I was digging...flash forward to earlier this year and the house had a fire. I went over to help my uncle salvage what we could and I saved all the family photos and keepsakes, but still never found any baseball cards.

The one thing I did find was a couple of real photo postcards circa 1910 with my great grandfather.

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Posted By: Rob D.

It's 1988, and my future wife's father is doing some renovation work for an elderly lady who's getting ready to move from her house. She comes across a box of cards her two sons collected back in the 1950s. She has no use for them, she says, and her sons, who live out of state, have told her to maybe try to sell them and just keep the money.

My future father-in-law mentions that his daughter's boyfriend knows quite a bit about cards and could be of help and might possibly want to buy them. Now, as I hear this scenario for the first time, I'm dubious, because I've been down these dead ends before. But I go over to the house the next day, and in the middle of a dusty kitchen that's having new cabinets put in and is in a state of complete disarray, I'm dumbfounded as a shoebox full of absolutely beautiful Red Man cards in placed in front of me. No rubberbands. All with tabs. Sharp corners, great gloss. Stars. Superstars. Just beautiful. A conservative guess is there were probably 300 of them.

In my mind I'm already trying to figure out how to raise the money to make a fair offer (I was playing minor-league baseball at the time, so the bank account wasn't exactly overflowing). I start to explain that these cards came packaged with packs of Red Man chewing tobacco and point to the back of one of the cards where this is printed. I no sooner get the word "tobacco" out of my mouth when the woman says, "No, there's no possible way these came with tobacco. My boys did not smoke."

I explain that Red Man was a chewing tobacco and that people didn't smoke it ... "I don't care what kind of tobacco it was, young man, my boys wouldn't think of even touching tobacco. Not then, now now."

So now I realize that this woman is truly pissed. It's like I'm Joe Camel dangling cigarettes in front of her kids' mouths. I say that probably her boys were given these cards by other people who bought the tobacco. No dice. "These never should even have been brought into the house."

And with that she puts the small stack of cards I had set on the table back into the box, takes the box and starts to leave the kitchen.

I'm speechless. How the heck did this woman not know these cards came with tobacco? Can she not read? Had she even looked at them? What have I done? There are a hundred things racing through my mind.

I recover in time to explain that the cards are probably pretty valuable. Doesn't matter. She leaves the room, returns empty-handed and says, "I will get answers to how those cards ever were brought into this house." I have no doubt.

I know I'm screwed. I ask if I can just look at them to give her an idea what exactly she has. The look I receive could have killed. "I don't care what they're worth. They will not be sold."

I look pleadingly at my father-in-law, who just shrugs. I'm in a tough spot, because this lady is a customer of his, so I don't want to risk making her even madder. A couple weeks later, when he was about to finish the job, my father-in-law brought up the cards again -- making one last effort for me after I literally begged him -- but the lady said she didn't even want to talk about them.

To this day I truly believe she burned them. After reading her sons the riot act.

No wonder they moved out of state.

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Posted By: peter ullman

I was in my early twenties in 1992-93...living with my parents after college in MD. The internet was young and I used to frequent a vintage bb card classified/Q&A site. Someone posted an ad asking for info on honus wagner/ty cobb cards. I responded and agreed to meet a gentleman in Freehold, NJ.

We met at a macDonalds and there were 2 guys...one younger and an elderly gentleman whose friend had passed away and left him a tobacco box of cards. There were lots of non-sports tobacco...I remember a pirate back oriental character card. 10-15 e90-1's. And he had 2 complete e94 sets...minus one john mcgraw. We laid them all out on the table...in macdonalds...they were definitely loved...probably g-vg...I remember the cobbs were real nice. I wasn't terribly knowledgeable about vintage cards back then and I had to use my price guide to identify them. I offered to help him sell the cards in exchange for the e90-1's...as previously stated...e94's weren't terribly popular back then and I didn't want them. I never heard from them again. I should have bought them all!!!!!!!!

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Posted By: Jim Parker

Guys, great stories, keep them coming! This is what this board should be about!

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Posted By: Todd Evans

Back in the summer of 1999, I was searching the classified ads that people post on the old baseball.com website, it may have been the same one that Peter mentioned in his post. Well, I see an ad that says they have 207 1933 Goudeys in EX to NM condition including (4) Ruth's, Gehrig, Dean and Bengough. It also list that there are 459 1939 Playball with (4) Williams and (4) DiMaggio's in the same condition. The asking price was $27,000. I email the poster and excitedly waited for the reply.

Two to three weeks go by and no response so I thought it was a scam. I go down to Atlanta to attend the National with some cards and items from another find that I made and will post later, (I have a good Mr. Mint story). I get back into town three or four days later and there is a reply in my email with his phone #. I call him up to have him send me some scans of the cards but he was an older gentleman and wasn't too computer literate and didn't have a scanner. So I told him to photo copy a couple of the cards and fax them to me. The next thing I know I get a list of each card and next to it what he thought the grade was as well as some photocopies of some of the cards. I'm thiking Wow this guy really has these so I arrange to meet him in Pittsburgh where he is located. I drive down from Louisville, KY to Pittsburgh, PA with cash and protection, if you know what I mean in a briefcase. We meet at and there are two people there, a middle aged man who I had been communicating with and his father in his late 80's, who had originally purchased and collected the cards. We meet at the son's workplace and go into the conference room to start going though the cards.

The next thing you know he brings in some shoe boxes and out comes a load of 1933 Goudey's that are in VG to EX-MT condition. The hoard of 1933 Goudey's (224) turned out to be just 15 cards short of a complete set. Out comes another larger shoe box with a hoard of 1939 Playball cards. This box contained over 450 cards in better condition than the Goudeys. (4) Williams, (4) DiMaggio's, I was amazed. The guy had 3 complete low # sets and was just 11 cards short of a 4th.

Well, it gets down to the time to make the deal and he raises the price from $27k to $32k so I'm like hey what's going on here? So I ask them if they have anymore cards and he said he does. He brings in some more boxes and out comes a bunch of 1933 Goudey Sport Kings, some 1938 R42 Don't Let it Happen Over Here cards, a bunch of Goudey Indian cards and a large hoard of 1938 Horror's of War cards. These cards were all in comparable condition to the other cards. There were 40 out of a possible 48 for a complete set of 1933 Sport Kings (missing the Ruth, Cobb, Hubbell and Didrickson). The golfer cards (Hagen, Sarazen and Jones cards were real nice as well as several others like the Rockne and Hoppe.

In the end we come to a price of $32k for everything. I pay them cash and we're all happy and we part ways. I ended up consigning the cards to Mastro's where they had PSA graded some of the cards. The four 1939 Playball Williams' ended up grading out one 8, one 7 and 2 6's while the four DiMaggios greded out at three 7's and one 6. The rest of the Playballs graded ut well with the majority coming back 7's and 8's. The Sport Kings graded out well with the Hagen, Sarazen, Shore Rockne, Londos and Hoppe all came back PSA 8's while the Bobby Jones just missed coming back a PSA 7.

The collection was sold over two different auctions, the 1999 Millennium auction and following June 2000 auction. I did good, but I thought the 1939 Playballs were sold wrong as they should have been broken up and I would have realized a much higher price. The timinng also was an issue as this auction was right after the Halper sale so I'm sure some lots were effected. If I had it to do over again, I would have just listed them over time on Ebay and would have more than likely made more money since the person that bought the 1939 Playball lot listed the 1939 Playball Ted Williams PSA 8 and got over 8k for it alone.

It was once-in-a-lifetime deal that just happend to turn out to be real. I have another story that I will post later about a small find that could have been so much bigger than this but it turns out with a sad ending.

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Posted By: Phil

Here's my second such story that happened recently. I'm hoping maybe another forum member may know more about what happened to these cards.

About a year ago, I turn on the local (Cape Cod, MA) radio station as I get ready for work in the morning and I hear the 2 men that run the talk show talking about their baseball card collections that they had as a kid. So then they start taking phone calls from listeners and you hear all the typical stories, i.e. "My mother threw them away...I got interested in girls....I went away to college.....etc., etc."

Then they take a call from a gentleman that starts explaining that he has UNOPENED PACKS of baseball cards from the 1940s. The hosts start balking at his story so he tells them he actually has about 2 CASES OF UNOPENED BASEBALL CARDS from the 1940s. They start joking with him, "yeah right". He says that he really has them and he will bring them down to the studio sometime to show them. He then explains that his brother is very ill and needs some medical attention and that they don't have any money, so he asks them if they knew the best way to sell their stash to raise some money for medical expenses. They didn't have a good answer.

So I step into action and email the hosts and explain that I collect vintage cards and that their best deal would be to sell to a collector as opposed to a dealer, because a dealer will only buy them at a percentage of what they are worth so they can turn a profit, but a collector will give them a much better deal.

I hear nothing for weeks, but about 3 weeks later I turn on the radio and hear that the gentleman was just in the studio with the cards and they told him to contact me directly because of the email I had sent them. They actually give him my name and the name of my business on the air and tell him to contact "Our friend Phil down at ..."

Needless to say, I start anticipating every person coming into my shop that day, but no cards. It's been over a year now and I have a feeling someone else listening to the radio show probably drove right down to the studio and caught the guy in the parking lot with the cards. What could have been?

If anyone else knows of this find, I would love to hear from you.

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Posted By: Brian Koyama

My story is quite typical. My wife's aunt knew that I am a die hard baseball fan and collected cards. Two years ago, one of her co-workers husband had recently passed and told the aunt that she had some stuff she wanted to get rid of, particularily baseball cards. She said her husband collected for years and had old cards of Ruth, Gehrig, etc. kept in plastic sheets in the closet. Well, I got a call from this lady asking if I would come down to take a look at the cards. Of course I jumped at the chance and headed down with all my guides in hand. Much to my dismay, all the "old" Ruth, Gehrig, etc. cards were from the Conlon reprint collection from a few years back and from the Renatta Gallasso reprints from the 80's. I spent a couple hours going through all the binders and the only card worth any money was a 1993 Topps (Marlins first year issue) Derek Jeter card. I explained that her husband was probably like me and he collected cards he liked and didn't care of the monetary value. He probably like to take the cards out and look at the players and remember some of the old timers (he was in his late 80's). That brought a smile to her face and she did recall how he used to always talk about the games he used to go to when he was young. She gave all the cards to her daughter who had some sons that could enjoy them.

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Posted By: Tom Hufford

I grew up in Pulaski, VA, and when the Phillies placed a minor league team there (Appalachian League) in 1969, I was in college and jumped at the chance to "work" for the team for four seasons 1969-72. I say "work" since there was no pay for selling tickets, being the sometimes official scorer, and doing whatever else there was to do around the park - but I WAS paid $5 a game for being the ballpark organist. I could be wrong, but I think I was the last organist in that league, and that was 36 years ago.

Anyway, when the Phillies left Connie Mack Stadium for Veteran's Stadium after the 1970 season, they sent several truckloads of seats from Connie Mack Stadium to Pulaski, to be used at Calfee Park. (I assume some were sent to their other minor league affiliates, also). A lot of Connie Mack Stadium was pretty well torn up after the final game in 1970, and it took quite a bit of work to put enough seat parts together to make about 700-800 seats, replacing some of the old wooden bleacher seats in Pulaski.

When I went back home to visit, during the off-season of 1976 or 1977, I went by to take a look at the ballpark. I was shocked to see that all of the old Connie Mack Stadium seats were gone. I hunted up the team's general manager, and asked what had happened to them. He responded "they just became too much of a maintenance problem so we took them all out and hauled them to the dump." I asked him when that was done, and he said "we hauled them out yesterday. If you had come two days ago, you could have had them all." So, I drove straight to the county landfill, only to find that the seats had been buried that morning.

I still think about what I would have done had I gone home two days earlier - hauled 700 or so Connie Mack Stadium seats to my parents' backyard, I guess, and then figured out what to do with them!