Have you ever been ripped off when buying cards?

[D. Bergin]

I remember back in the late 80's when Don Mattingly was super hot I set up at a show with a buddy. We were teenagers then and we decided to be partners, which didn't last long at all.

Anyways, we had a pretty good show but then my buddy goes off the deep end. It's the end of the show and this other guy at the show has a ton of 84Topps Rack Packs at an unbelievable price.

My buddy comes back to me and tells me we need to sink all our earnings into these packs. At the time we were selling Mattingly's for 25 bucks apiece and I think Darryl Strawberry was also selling for a bit to. They were easy sales. If you had them they would sell.

I had a funny feeling about this guy. I was pretty sure he'd been caught selling tampered packs before and I just didn't feel right about it. I tried to nix the deal but my buddy got pissed at me and went and made the deal anyways.

When we got home we opened all the packs and everything was obviously searched. No Mattingly's, No Strawberry's or anything else that might have been of value at the time. You could even see the fingernail marks on the back cards the guy used to find the pack patterns.

They aren't worth crap now but at the time it was pretty depressing opening up packs and packs of commons.