What would you do?

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Posted By: David Smith

This might be a little off topic (only in the sense that the cards were newer).

In the Spring of 2006, I was out yard saleing (sp?) on a Saturday morning. I stopped at a house, looked around and asked if the guy had any baseball items. He said sure and took me to the back of his garage and into a small storage room. This guy was in his late 60's or early 70's and I never heard how he got the cards but he had some newer baseball cards. Most of the cards were of Cubs players (1950's to 1980's) but he also had a complete 1972 Topps set in a binder. I asked if those were for sale. He said, "yes". I asked, "how much?" and he said "$40 dollars".

I didn't have that much on me and told him I had to go to the bank. After goinjg to the bank and getting the money, I stopped at another yard sale that had items I could sell on eBay. I spent all of my money plus had to go back to the bank again. That tapped me out for that week because I hadn't been paid for some items that I had sold plus, I had to save back to pay bills.

By the next weekend, I had the money and went back to the house and the people were gone. The sale had been a moving sale though the sign said only yard sale. I was going to give the guy $100 bucks because I figured a complete 1972 Topps baseball set in at least VG was surely worth $200 or $300 hundred dollars.

My idea was to compare those cards to my partial set, pick the best condition cards and thereby upgrade the set. The dupes I was going to offer as one lot on eBay and just see what they sold for. If the cards sold for more than $100 dollars, then I would have essentially upgraded AND completed my set for free.

David