"The Most I've Ever Spent on a Card" - A story in 12 parts. What's your story?

[Bliggity]

I was watching a card collecting channel on YouTube the other day. The guy was talking about a new pickup and mentioned that it was the most he’d ever spent on a card. We all have those moments where we put in that last bid, or pick up that amazing card on BST or at a show, where we’re spending more on a single card than we ever have before. It’s exciting, and can also make you very nervous because you may be stretching (or breaking) your budget, or worrying about whether it’s a smart long-term purchase. So that got me thinking - how many of those moments have I had? I keep pretty detailed records of my collection, so I spent some time going back through my purchases and found that I’ve had 12 of those moments in my card-collecting journey. I’m very happy to say that all 12 of these cards are still in my collection, and none of my “the most I’ve ever spent on a card” purchases have led to regret. So here is my list. These aren’t necessarily the most valuable cards in my collection, or even necessarily the ones I like the most, but are just the cards that represent every time I’ve said “it was the most I’ve ever spent on a card.” I’ve mostly left the prices out because they don’t particularly matter.

Here's my story. What's yours?


#1. 1961 Topps HR Leaders Mantle/Maris

It was July 1991. I was 10 years old. I would buy packs of Topps, Score, Fleer, and Donruss at the corner gas station with my weekly allowance (and maybe Upper Deck, if I could afford it). My idol was Don Mattingly, and I revered all of the legendary Yankees. There were a couple card shops in the area (Chapel Hill, NC), but the treasures they held were far out of my reach. Owning a Mantle card was unattainable. For my birthday, we went to a mini-golf place in Raleigh. One the way home, we stopped at a card store in Raleigh that I’d never been to. In the vintage case was this card. It had Mantle AND Maris! All the other Mantle cards I’d ever seen had hefty price tags of $50 or more, but this one was only $10! That was the equivalent of about 20 Topps packs. I had a little extra money from my birthday, and my parents agreed that I could spend it on the card. I handed over my $10 and got a treasure that I couldn’t wait to show off to all of my friends. It was the most I had ever spent on a baseball card.




#2. 1984 Donruss Don Mattingly RC

It was December 1993. My 1961 Topps Mantle/Maris was still the best card in my collection, but my dream card was the 1984 Donruss Mattingly RC. Some of my friends had the Topps RC or even Fleer, but everyone knew the Donruss RC was the card to have...unless you were one of those guys who was more into Canseco. I had some money from the holidays and went to the Baseball Card Attic in Chapel Hill to get some packs. There in the showcase they had my holy grail, the most beautiful card ever made. It took some convincing, but my parents relented, and I bought it. It was the most I had ever spent on a baseball card.




#3. 1954 Bowman Mickey Mantle

It was September 2014. Like many others, I had collected into my early teens, and then got distracted by the “real world.” Now I was 33 years old, married with a young daughter. I hadn’t thought about cards in years. I still had a couple 5000-count boxes of junk wax from when I was a kid, and they were taking up space in the house, so I decided to just get rid of them. I looked for a local store in Raleigh and found one near my house (the short-lived Big D’s Cards). I took my boxes into the shop and told the owner he could have them for free. On my way out, I noticed he had an opened box of ‘83 Fleer on the counter and was selling packs for $5. I bought one and figured it would be fun to open a pack after 20 years. I went out to my car, opened the pack, and pulled a Ripken RC. Whoa! I went back in the shop and bought a toploader for the card. Then I started talking more to the owner, and he mentioned that he’d just bought a shoebox collection from someone with a bunch of early Bowman cards. He showed me the box full of ‘53 and ‘54 Bowmans, and said he’d sent a few of the better cards to PSA (whatever that meant). They had just come back, and one of them was a ‘54 Bowman Mantle. It was a beautiful card; I’d never seen one before. I ended up buying a ‘53 Bowman Hank Bauer from the box. I left the shop and went home, but kept thinking about pulling the Ripken RC and seeing the Mantle. The Mantle was a few hundred dollars and would be a completely frivolous purchase. I had gone to the shop to give away my old cards, and now I was going to buy one? But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I went back to the shop and looked at it again. What a great card. Was I really going to do this? Would I tell my wife how much I had spent? Well screw it, I was an adult man and had a job, and I bought the Mantle. It was the most I had ever spent on a baseball card.




#4. 1939 Play Ball Joe DiMaggio

It was February 2015. I was now six months into my new-again collecting hobby. I was mostly drawn to vintage and was starting to build a ‘53 Bowman set, but was also starting to discover prewar. I found Net54 and joined in December 2014, which was the month that I bought my first preward card. I discovered Old Cardboard and the Standard Catalog, and was learning as much as I could. I was on my computer working at my dining-room table one night and took a break to peruse eBay. I saw an auction ending soon for a 1939 Play Ball Joe DiMaggio from a seller called PWCC. I wasn’t that familiar with the card but I thought the card was hauntingly beautiful in its simplicity. I put in a bid a few minutes later as the auction was winding down as a complete impulse purchase. It was more than I’d spent on the ‘54 Bowman Mantle, but it wasn’t that much more, and hey, it was Joe DiMaggio, and it seemed to be in pretty nice condition. It ended up becoming my Net54 avatar, and still is. It was the most I had ever spent on a baseball card.




#5. E106 American Caramel Christy Mathewson

It was June 2016, and my prewar collecting was in full swing. I loved building sets, and I was working on T205s and T209-1s. I also loved the E90/92-family sets, and was picking up as may different examples as I could. I didn’t have a Mathewson or an E106 yet, and then an E106 Mathewson popped up in an eBay auction. It was in an SGC 1.5 holder, but the eye appeal seemed better than that, and Christy looked so pretty in his lipstick. I knew it would be more pricy than the Play Ball DiMaggio, but I decided to make a run at it. We were on vacation the day it ended, and I excused myself from the rest of the family to go up to my room so I could put in a snipe as the auction closed. I put in my snipe and won it for a little bit under my bid. It was a beautiful card that checked off multiple boxes on my want-list, and I couldn’t wait to get home from vacation to open the box. It was the most I had ever spent on a baseball card.




#6. E121 American Caramel Ty Cobb

It was April 2017. I was making progress on my colorful tobacco and candy sets, but wanted to start something completely different just for some variety. I decided on E121, which with its larger size and B&W real photos seemed to be a good foil for the colorful lithograph cards that made up most of my collection. I had also just finished reading Leerhsen’s “Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty,” and had Cobb on the brain. I saw an E121 Cobb come up on eBay, and it looked nicer than the SGC 2 slab it was in. I didn’t have any Cobb cards in my collection yet and this would be a strong pickup early in my E121 efforts, so I put in good bid and won it for a hair over what I’d paid for my E106 Mathewson. It was the most I had ever spent on a baseball card.




#7. 1953 Bowman Mickey Mantle

It was March 2018. I had been slowly putting together a mid-grade ‘53 Bowman set ever since I had seen the shoebox collection in my local card store in September 2014. I wanted a set with great eye appeal and was becoming a stickler for centering and registration. I had passed on many dozens of Mantles and was still looking for the perfect copy. I knew I’d never own a ‘52 Topps, but with its action pose and blue sky, the ‘53 Bowman was the next best thing. Prices had been ticking up slowly and I was concerned that I was going to get priced out soon, when all of the sudden this copy showed up in a Goodwin auction in a SGC 50 holder. It was exactly what I was looking for, and looked like it could even bump up a half grade. I knew it would probably sell for a strong price, but if I didn’t get it then, who knows what I’d have to pay in the future? I put in a final bid that was a little more than I was really comfortable with, and I won it. It was the most I had ever spent on a baseball card.




#8. D303-2 Mother’s Bread Eddie Plank

It was August 2018. I’d still been picking up E90/92-family candy cards here and there, and the one type I didn’t have yet a D303 Mother’s Bread card. In fact, I don’t think I had ever seen one for sale in the 2+ years that I’d been collecting the E90/92 family. This one came up on eBay and I was immediately blown away. How on earth was this a PSA 1? The front was beautiful with huge borders and great registration and color. There was some paper loss on back, but it barely touched the design. I wasn’t necessarily looking to spend up on a HOF’er for my D303-2 type, but I just couldn’t sit this one out. I gritted my teeth and put in a bid, not even really expecting to win it, but it went lower than I thought and it was mine. I usually crack out my slabbed cards and had cracked all of my E90/92-family cards to that point (even the E106 Mathewson), but I didn’t have the guts to remove this one from its slab. It was the most I had ever spent on a baseball card.




#9. M101-2 Sporting News Joe Jackson

It was April 2020. I had started collecting the M101-2 set a couple years earlier (before it was cool) and was about halfway done. I had the Wagner and Mathewson, but was still missing the biggest three, Cobb, Cobb/Wagner, and Joe Jackson. Then Covid hit. We had been in lockdown for about five weeks. I hadn’t bought anything in a while and was hesitant to start now with all the uncertainty around, but card auctions had just started back up and it seemed like this was going to be the new normal for a while. Plus, like most, I had a little extra cash around since I hadn’t gone out to do anything in over a month. REA ran its first post-Covid auction and there was a Jackson in it. It was a beautiful copy; it had a small hole in the top edge but was otherwise perfect, which was about as good as you could expect with M101-2s. It was hard to price because PSA didn’t grade them so there was no VCP history, but I won it for one increment under my max. Within the next year, PSA started grading M101-2s, and I think the next Jackson to sell was in a PSA 1 holder and went for 16x what I’d paid for mine in the middle of the Covid bubble. Even though mine then seemed like a bargain, it was the most I had ever spent on a baseball card.




#10. R310 Butterfinger Babe Ruth

It was May 2021. Covid lockdown restrictions were loosening and we were still flush with cash. With prices exploding, I had to stop progress on many of my prewar sets because I got priced out of being able to complete them. Nonetheless, I was pretty happy with the state of my collection, with a couple exceptions. I had no Ruth or Gehrig cards, and it looked like I might not ever be able to afford them, at least not traditional cards. But collecting M101-2 supplements got me looking into other types of supplements, and I found the 1934 Butterfingers, which had both Ruth and Gehrig in the set. Prices on those hadn’t really started going up that much, especially raw, and there weren’t many PSA slabbed examples yet. A really nice Ruth copy came up in Heritage, and I figured this was my chance to add a Ruth that, although expensive, would only cost a fraction of what a 1933 Goudey or 1920s Ruth cards would cost. I put in what I thought was a competitive bid based on recent raw sales and won it. Coincidentally, in the very next Heritage auction there was a Gehrig that I won also to complete the R310 pair. The Gehrig was pricy, but I had paid a little more for the Ruth. In fact, it was the most I had ever spent on a baseball card.




#11. 1957 Topps Mickey Mantle

It was August 2022. Prices were high and my set collecting had mostly stalled out because I knew I’d never be able to afford to finish most of the sets I was collecting. Instead, I started gravitating to picking up high eye-appeal vintage singles. I didn’t have any particular plan, but would just wait until something caught my eye. I was at the Raleigh card show and one of the dealers I usually bought from had this in his display, along with some other sharp raw ‘57s. It was priced over VCP, with good reason. I bought a couple other ‘57s from him, but hemmed and hawed over the Mantle. I ended up leaving without it, but regretted it the rest of the weekend because it was just so damn nice and I’d probably never find another one that I liked as much. I texted the dealer on Monday and ended up going over to his house to buy the Mantle. It’s still probably the best mid-grade copy I’ve ever seen. It was the most I had ever spent on a baseball card.




#12. M101-2 Sporting News Ty Cobb

It was March 2024. I was so close to finishing the M101-2 set. I was lucky to have picked up the Joe Jackson before the price runup, but I was still missing the Cobb and Cobb/Wagner. PSA had only recently been grading M101-2s, and even though almost all slabbed M101-2s are graded A or 1, people had been paying big money for low-grade slabbed examples. Raw examples had also gone up, but there was a huge gap between raw A/1 and PSA A/1. This raw one came up from an estate-sale seller on eBay. They ran an auction at a big starting price, and it didn’t sell. Then they ran another auction with a slightly lower starting price, and again it didn’t sell. Repeat a few times. Eventually it got to a price where I thought it might start attracting bidders. I could get it if I really stretched, and I thought if I didn’t get this one, it was fairly likely that I would never get one. Condition was obviously rough with lots of pinholes at the corners, but it was all there and Cobb’s image was strong and unblemished. It cost a lot more than I had even spent on the ‘57 Mantle, but it would be a centerpiece to my collection and a huge step towards completing one of my favorite sets. As the eBay auction counted down, I bid the starting price with 3 seconds left, and won it as the only bidder. I waited in anticipation as the seller sent the card to the eBay authenticator. It passed of course, and then...it disappeared. eBay blamed FedEx. FedEx blamed eBay. Weeks went by and it was gone forever. I was heartbroken. Two months later, I get a notification that a package was delivered to my house. I wasn't expecting anything. What could it be? Could it be....do you think? Yes! I finally had my M101-2 Cobb. It is the most I have ever spent on a baseball card.



And that’s my story. Let’s hear yours!