Growing up in the mid 90s and early 00s I was primarily a modern collector with one major exception: 1971 Topps. This set was my gateway drug into vintage. It started when I was around 10 years old, when I had only been collecting for a year, and my dad came home from his weekly flea market trip with a binder of 150 or so 1971 Topps cards with some duplicates. I fell in love and decided I'd put the set together.
One card in particular was captivating: #5, Thurman Munson. If I'm being honest I didn't really know who he was at age 10. But this card was so cool, as it was the only one (in the grouping that I had, which must not have had a Jim Fregosi or Roy White or...) that was horizontal, and it had this incredibly cool play at the plate photo. Plus, that giant rookie cup logo!
By my junior year of high school I had more or less fallen out of collecting, and when I left for college in June I left my cards behind. I was more interested in girls, music, girls, and girls. A few months into my first full semester (probably October or so) I saw a commercial on TV for a card store in town. I drove over there the next day, but they were closed. A couple weeks later I went by again. The store owner was so personable and started showing me all of the new products. He and I were talking about baseball and cards in general. Somehow I mentioned that my favorite card ever was the 1971 Topps Thurman Munson and he says "oh, you gotta see this!" He pulls out a card from 2005 Topps Rookie Cup -- an original buyback of that card with a Rookie Cup commemorative relic embedded, and a 1/1 stamp. It was so cool. He told me he wanted 100 bucks for it. I was a poor college student and passed. I did, however, buy a box of Rookie Cup which cost me about the same amount. Rookie Cup became my favorite product, the store owner and I became friends, and at some point he sold the card on ebay. I asked him to send me a picture of the card, just so I had that.
A few months later, after winter break, I brought my cards back up to college with me. A couple months after that I pulled out my 71 set and decided to continue trying to complete it. And I started thinking about that Rookie Cup card.
Several years later I started posting sporadically on forums looking for this card. I set up ebay alerts, made posts on Twitter, mentioned it to dealers I got to know. I stopped collecting modern over the years, and even stopped collecting newer vintage after finally completing my 71 set, and moved into pre-war. But I never forgot that card.
One day I'm checking out ebay and I see the card. It was graded now, but it was the one. It hadn't tripped my search alert -- despite having 6 different alerts set up, I hadn't counted on the seller writing "1 of 1" instead of "1/1." There's a reserve. I bid a stupid amount, am the high bidder, but the reserve isn't met. It's relisted, we go through the same charade only this time it sells for MORE, but the reserve still isn't met. I message the seller and tell her the story. I ask her price. She tells me a number so high that my heart sinks. My wife and I were saving for our adoption at the time, and even if we weren't, I couldn't live with myself if i paid that price for almost any card, let alone this one. I give her my phone number and tell her to let me know if she can ever come down on the price.
A couple weeks later I get a call from an unknown number and let it go to voicemail. It's the seller. I hurriedly call her back. She tells me she was a Munson supercollector and her husband used to buy her rare cards, but he passed a few years earlier and her kids don't want the cards so she's selling. She says she was doing research about this card and ran across my various posts about it, read my story, and wants me to have the card. She names a price closer to mine and I immediately accept.
To this day I'm embarrassed by what I paid for the card, especially considering it lives in a box in my closet. It's no longer the most I've ever spent on a card -- but it is my second most expensive card, and there's no great story to go along with my W514 Shoeless Joe so I'm submitting this one as my story.
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