Post your best story! The Buy that got away

[wdwfan]

Mine wasn't too long ago, maybe about 10 years. I had taken out an ad in the paper looking for cards. I had a guy call and say he had a shed full of cards. We met early on a July 4 because it was in a shed with no AC.

He had 2-3 pallets of cases of cards. Some several notebooks and then a few boxes of singles. It was all stored just wonderfully. The cases were all wrapped but I could see some were from the 1980s-1990s.

I flipped through a few of the notebooks and saw all sorts of 50s-60s-70s cards. Assuming partial sets, etc. Some of the pages even had 2-3 of the same cards stacked in the same pocket. All looked to be in really good shape and had some pretty big names in them (Mays, Aaron, Rose to name a few). He did tell me there were no Mantle cards because he had another guy buy up all of those a couple of months earlier.

We came to a price agreement ($400 for everything). I was shocked he was willing to go so low. But I told him I didn't have that kind of cash on hand, however, I could have it the next morning when the bank opened. Well he called me that afternoon and said he had talked to his son, and the son had talked him into holding on to all of the cards. So the sale fell through. I"m wondering what would've happened had I had the cash on hand at the moment. I know I'd have had a ton of gradable 50s-60s cards plus a few cases of 1980s-1990s baseball.