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

[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

[IndyDave]

I've mentioned this a couple of times in posts since I joined, but probably my best story like this is the first card show I ever attended.

I was a regular reader of The Sporting News (the local drug store held me a copy at $0.35 per week) and was 12-13 years old in the early 1970's. Answering some sort of ad that was in TSN led me to getting a few of the early hobby newsletters. And from one of those newsletters I received a letter from a collector in Grove City, Pennsylvania, about an hour from my house in a suburb of Youngstown, Ohio.

Bill MacTaggart invited me to a show he was hosting at his house. My parents drove my brother and I over and we found Bill's house on Grant Street. There were a handful of collectors set up on card tables and other tables on the front porch and in the living room. It was amazing to see all the older cards everyone had that I had only seen on one of the early checklist books that we had.

I can't remember any of the cards we bought or how many cards we bought. I do know that we had a wonderful time and my parents hit it off with Bill and his wife Jean. Bill eventually rented a hall for his show (I think he had two different locations) and my brother and I each took a table at his show for several years. The show circuit around Youngstown was Bill's show in Grove City in June and Jim Borgen's show at the McKinley Memorial in Niles in July.

I've traded Christmas cards and letters with Bill for nearly 50 years now. In those early years in the 70's, he would often buy my brother and I boxes of cards that were in Grove City and not Youngstown (including hockey cards) and ship them to us. We've traded cards over the years and I've thoroughly enjoyed our hobby friendship.

I haven't seen Bill for way too long. A couple of times since I moved to Indiana in 1997 we've been back in Youngstown and gone to the outlet mall in Grove City - I've often kicked myself for not having set up a lunch or dinner with Bill.

I see the occasional picture of early hobby "shows". I wish we would have had pictures of the set-ups on Bill's porch.

[Kingcobb]

I purchased the majority of my T206's from a man in Virginia with the last name of Maxwell thru a mail in auction that was advertised thru Sports Collectors Digest in the 1980's. I would mail him my bids from a list of hundreds of cards and usually won. I probably won close to 200 cards from him including all 4 cobbs. His grading was pretty accurate. I believe the Cobb cards were under $100.00's each. I was a big Cleveland collector I remember getting a Lajoie Portrait for $25 and the Young Portrait for $60 I had them graded later the Lajoie was a 5 and the Young a 4. Does anyone else remember buying from him?

[sb1]

James Maxwell and Virginia Caputo. bought quite a bit from them myself.

[Pat R]

About 20 years ago a retired teacher opened a card store in our small town just about when I started collecting T206's. Most of his oldest stuff was from his own collection from the 50's and 60's I think he might have had a few early 1900's cards at the time. One day I stopped in and he greeted me with wait till you see what I bought today and he reaches in the case and pulls out 9 T206's and hands them to me. I started looking through them and they were all brown Hindu's in really nice shape. I had just started collecting T206's and knew very little about them and he knew even less. He said an older lady brought them in and wanted to sell them. We went back and forth on whether he wanted to sell them and he finally said he would. As I said it was when I just started collecting them and I had never even seen a Hindu and didn't know that they were worth more than the Piedmonts and Sweet Caporals and neither did he. I ended up buying 8 of the 9 for $480 I paid between $40 and $85 each. I passed on one because it was miscut I think he wanted $30 for it.

After I bought them I came home and got out my copy of Bill Heitman's T206 The Monster that I recently bought to do a little research on the Hindu's as I honestly didn't know if they were real or not but from what I found in the book I was pretty confident they were so I went back in to buy the last one and he had already sold it.

I had them all graded just about 10 years ago two of them graded PSA 5.5, five graded PSA 5 and one graded PSA 3 at the time all but one was the highest graded. Six of the eight are still the highest graded today.

A couple of years later when I had learned a lot more about them I asked him about the woman that had brought them in and he said that was the first time he had ever seen her and he never saw her again.
I sold all of them a few years ago but now I wish I had kept at least one of them.

[packs]

I no longer own this baseball but it's my best find to date. I was trolling eBay years ago, maybe close to a decade now, and found a listing for an antique signed baseball. The listing had a terrible out of focus photo and the description said the seller didn't know who signed the baseball but there were three autographs on it.

I bought the ball for the $80 buy it now because it kinda looked like Grover Alexander on the sweet spot. Not only was I right about Grover, but the ball was also signed by Babe Didrickson.