Buy my Moustache ... Plus a Chance to WIN!

[mouschi]

Sabotaged.

Yesterday afternoon, I heard my phone kaCHING a few extra times to bid my card up from $209 to $413 or $414 - Absolutely thrilling! After researching one of the bidders, it turned out they are a banned member on a forum, though I couldn't find anything negative they said.

The other person was another member on the forums, to which I reached out to letting them know I have my concerns of who is the high bidder, and they are the next in line for it.

Shortly thereafter, a new ebay member bid. They ended up being the winner. The person I reached out to wrote me back and said the following:

"Wait what? I didn't even put a bid in for it. I just checked my account and someone must have hacked into my account, someone also put a bid in for a Kris Bryant ref auto. (Which I didn't do!)"

We went back and forth for a bit, and after I told them the new buyer was in the same area, they asked for the address so they could check for me. I thought this was quite a strange offer, so I did a little more research.

Big shocker - the address of the winner was a fake. The phone number, however, was not. OOPS! I ran a search and came up with the address associated with the phone number. In an attempt to get the truth out, I told the person the address was fake, and showed them the address that came up.

Here is the next response:

"What phone # is it? That is my address. This is getting really creepy."

After my next message to them, they confessed and said they did it because they were jealous of me and my creativity. They said they were the top 3 bidders that had bid yesterday.

The next highest bidder quickly paid after I offered, thankfully, but ultimately, I was robbed of a chance of selling for between $208 and $412.

Unfortunately, I had multiple people tell me they would have paid more than I got, so I know I missed out getting the best I could for it.

Nothing is ever boring, is it?

I promised to keep the person's name a secret - it was a teenage girl who did all this. I mentioned that I would be proud of her if she confessed publicly online to people who did it. Though she was scared to do so, she ultimately did! Very classy move, I think.


So, that is all water under the bridge now. Going forward, I'm THRILLED that it sold and will give the exact price later, along with the winner! There were TONS of guesses about this all over the internet, so it will take a bit for me to do this.

If you have NOT won, stay tuned. I will be opening up The Mouschi Code for everyone to take. I had a fun time putting it together, and think/hope you will get a kick out of it as well. Though only rip-card owners will get a prize for completing, I do have some pieces I will be selling to help the mission trip fund.

As I have been given some lemons, in an attempt to make lemonade out of it, here are the first offerings.

The Blue auto for $15


The Red auto for $40 (only 10 will be made.)


How can anyone's collection be complete without an autographed card of a custom card maker?!?! Post here, or PM me if you want one!

[7nohitter]

Wait, some random teenage girl is jealous of your creativity so she created a fake ebay account? Is she stalking you, or she just randomly saw this on ebay?

[mouschi]

Originally Posted by 7nohitter

Wait, some random teenage girl is jealous of your creativity so she created a fake ebay account? Is she stalking you, or she just randomly saw this on ebay?

She is a member of a forum, and I think ultimately just tried to drive it up to perhaps win the rip card. She has admitted her mistake and all is good now.

[mouschi]

So, it looks like we have a winner! Before I reveal the winner, I wanted to go through some facts.

This contest was run on Blowout, Beckett, Freedom Cardboard, Sports Card Forum, Net54Baseball, my blog and facebook. Out of hundreds of replies, I found that the responses varied quite a bit. Someone guessed $0, and someone guessed $3,000. Here is a statistical breakdown:

6% said under $100
22% said between $101-250
37% said between $251-400
22% said between $400-600
6% said $601 and over
3% said this whole thing was narcisisstic/creepy
2% said they thought someone would plant my moustache hair at a crime scene
2% threatened to clone me

Of course, we do have to remember that 98% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

It has been a great week watching the guesses come in from all over the place!

So, with all that said - the winner .... drum roll pleaseeeee.....

SCF Member @Oriolesfan !

I will be pm'ing you with a request as to where I can send your rip card. Best of luck on your quest

I also wanted to publicly acknowledge Swipe79 and SSsportsCARDS for donating money for the mission trip. Thank you both!

Truly, everyone - thank you. This has been fun, but the fun does not stop here. www.TheMouschiCode.com is something I made for everyone to give a shot at just for fun! Once the winner of the rip card gets his shot at it, I'll let everyone else in.

Have a good evening, everyone, thanks for playing and keep your eyes peeled when the Mouschi Code is open to you!

[mouschi]

My wife and son leave for their trip on Thursday, so I thought I'd just give an update on the whole money raising part. I had about 6 people buy the mini blue/red autographs of me, which was very nice of them. I even had 2 people donate some money from the forums!

My wife decided to do a massive garage sale, and asked some friends/family members if they had any junk to donate for us to sell.

Yeah, they did.

We ended up getting a boat load of stuff. People came through in a huge way. While I was very thankful for the donated items, I was worried about the amount of stress it would cause just listing everything.

We stayed up in the garage last night until around 2am and were pretty much out on our feet by bed time. Our neighborhood isn't very well trafficked for this kind of thing, so our expectations were low. To help traffic though, I went ahead and posted it on about 7 websites.

By our calculations, we had $637 left to raise for their part. (We still are responsible for about $500 to contribute to the "pot" to pay for the building materials / furniture for the house.) We had done a few other fund raising garage sales and the last one ended up bringing in about $150 or so which was great.



7am came early, and we feverishly started putting things out. Before I even had time to litter the freeway and our neighborhood with our garage sale signs, people were checking out what we had.

By 8:30am, we were already sweat soaked because it was so hot and humid. At the end of the day, we filled up the cardboard mobile (the name I affectionately call our minivan thanks to my several excursions picking up card collections) and packed it to the brim (not joking - I'm surprised I fit in the driver seat!), then dropped the leftovers off to "Resale with a Purpose".

When I came back, we dumped all the money on the floor and counted it as a family. Keep in mind the part to pay for my wife and son was $637 (I actually didn't know this exact dollar until after the fact.) We ended up selling $645.55!

Needless to say, we are very happy and will be going out for a victory burger later. We still have about $500 left to go, but I would classify this as a miracle - that is a lot of money from a garage sale! God is good all the time, but He was especially good to us today!