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

[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.