". . . buying T206s at antique stores for 35 cents apiece." What's YOUR cool story?

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

Originally Posted by G1911

I'm a 90's baby, so I missed out on a lot of the bargains that are only bargains in retrospect. I've had some luck in 'real time bargains', where I got a card for much less than it's value.

Got a 52 Bowman Mays, missing a small piece of a corner but nice looking, for around $50 a few years ago. That was a steal even then. Found a T206 Young (hand showing) in an antique shop on the east coast on a work trip, paid $50 and traded it quickly. Would love the other Young pitching, not a big fan of the image on the no glove card.

And then I got this, my biggest bargain by a long shot, a couple weeks ago for $100 after Uncle Sam got his cut. This is the boxing T card equivalent of finding 8 pre-production T206 Wagner's on a sheet. Which mean's its worth way less than 1% of those Wagners, but it's a heck of a bargain.

What in the ever-loving F(&@^)#&^@!!! You just bought sheets of T220 silvers for $100??? Everyone else loses. Forever.

EDIT: Please share any story and tons of pics. My jaw is on the floor.

[Leon]

Somewhere around 18 yrs ago I had a find I called The Trucker Boy Find....nothing too crazy except, well.,.. Here it is in a thread with some other stories, from only 15 yrs ago.

https://www.net54baseball.com/showth...ht=trucker+boy
.

[milkit1]

Not the greatest story ever but I remember in 1988 answering an ad in SCD selling commons for $4. I requested and got a Chick Gandil which I was super excited about as the movie Eight Men Out had just come out.

[ocjack]

In the 1960's, I was working part-time on weekends at a bank in downtown L.A. One lunch, I walked by an old book store that had a huge picture window and 4 rubber-banded stacks of '51/'52 Bowmans in the window as decoration. They were marked at 25 cents each. I told the owner I wanted to buy the cards and he said he wasn't climbing into the window for 25 cents. I told him I wanted all four stacks and gave him $1.

There must have been about 50 cards in each stack so I walked out with probably 200 of them for $1.

It'll never happen again.

[egri]

I missed out on the 'buying green Cobbs for 25 cents' boat, but about two years ago, a seller on eBay listed four signed 1953 Topps Detroit Tigers, including Fred Hutchinson. The photo was terrible; I could barely see the cards, let alone the signatures, but at $80 for the lot, I figured it was worth taking a flyer. When I got them in hand, they were four beautiful vintage signatures, all authentic. In addition to the Hutch, two of the others ended up being upgrades for ones I already had. Since I bought them, a Hutchinson in worse shape than mine sold for over $1,200.

[IMG] [/IMG]

[G1911]

Originally Posted by Aquarian Sports Cards

What in the ever-loving F(&@^)#&^@!!! You just bought sheets of T220 silvers for $100??? Everyone else loses. Forever.

EDIT: Please share any story and tons of pics. My jaw is on the floor.

Made a separate thread over on the boxing sub with the details for discussion, etc. I'm pretty excited still

[sb1]

Bought a 180 card T206 lot out of a Broadway Rick auction, probably 20 years ago. Very little details in the SCD ad for the auction, mentioned a few HOFers and others. I called for details, and all they wanted to tell me how great a deal it was.....I kept inquiring as to condition, etc, but again they were more interested in hard selling the lot. I already knew I was going to bid on it, it wasn't really necessary. I opened and won the lot for the $1,800 opener. $10 a card, which was a pretty standard price back then. Binders of T206's with HOFer and usually a few E card mixed in were just sold by the card count x's X, which was often $10-12 a card.

When I received it I was pleasantly surprised with a Cobb BL 460, Brown Lenox Chase and several more backs of note. Of course all were sold well before the current boom.

[pete zouras]

$5 is actual price paid. Had authenticity confirmed by net54er of old Kevin Saucier. Contacted by dealer in antique mall responding to my craigslist paying top dollar for vintage baseball cards ad.

[Tere1071]

The store location I worked between 1982-84 had many walk-ins and I was able to get two Ruth autographed baseballs and a Clemente game-used U1 bat, with the permission of the shop owner. But the coolest thing was a man brought in a home St. Louis Browns jersey circa 1950-1951, it wasn't tagged with a name or date, but it did have the manufacturer and size tags.

He stated that he had a paper route in Cincinnati as a teenager and one of his customers gave it to him as a present. He wanted a Dodger Starter jacket in trade. I purchased the jacket from the shop at the full retail price and traded it for the jersey, again with the knowledge of the shop owner. No, I no longer have any of these items, having sold them over 35 years ago to help my mother out with some expenses at the time.

Phil aka Tere1071

[bbcard1]

I have played the game a long time with relatively few home runs to speak of...more of a slow and steady, which is very much like the rest of my life. One of my big "home run" buys was getting 150 T206s fro $100 which included Chance and a few other minors.

[dbrown]

At a usually dismal flea market in the northeast, I bought a very neat 1930s scrapbook from an old lady vendor for $15. I usually don't do scrapbooks but this one was pretty nice and then I saw a Cab Calloway autograph in there, on Cotton Club stationery. SOLD!

It was only when I got it home that I discovered the Babe Ruth-signed 1936 World Series ticket. Sold that page at Heritage a few years ago, to a disappointing result. So it goes.

[chriskim]

Originally Posted by sb1

Bought a 180 card T206 lot out of a Broadway Rick auction, probably 20 years ago. Very little details in the SCD ad for the auction, mentioned a few HOFers and others. I called for details, and all they wanted to tell me how great a deal it was.....I kept inquiring as to condition, etc, but again they were more interested in hard selling the lot. I already knew I was going to bid on it, it wasn't really necessary. I opened and won the lot for the $1,800 opener. $10 a card, which was a pretty standard price back then. Binders of T206's with HOFer and usually a few E card mixed in were just sold by the card count x's X, which was often $10-12 a card.

When I received it I was pleasantly surprised with a Cobb BL 460, Brown Lenox Chase and several more backs of note. Of course all were sold well before the current boom.

Wow.. great story! so you were the one who discovered the first Cobb BL460!

[sb1]

yes, it was the one that Heritage just sold with the two corners missing.

[fkm_bky]

Early in the previous Net54 board days I was looking to complete the E95 run and was able to pick up 10 of them from a kind board member for $225 and it included Wagner, Plank, Chance and one other HOFer. Wish I still had them. Sold them a while back (2007/08). It was a good deal back then, but by today’s standards it would be incredibly good!

Bill

[brianp-beme]

I had a similar Broadway Rick surprise haul about 15 years ago with a lot of 80 to 90 1929 Zeenut cards that I won on Ebay from him for about $7 or $8 a card or so, which was a reasonable amount for cards in low/mid Zeenut condition. Not quite the incredible score that Mr. sb1 came across, but like his lot there was minimal description/photos and in my case no mention of any cards of extra value. I was shocked when I found that it contained two Oana cards, a Lombardi, a Reese and an autographed Lefty Gomez (his pre-rookie) card. If it was a consignment and I was the consigner, I would have been very upset how carelessly the lot had been listed.

Brian