Show me your "steals"

[triwak]

Not prewar, but back in the early 70's (I was a young teen), a buddy and me found a garage sale while riding our bikes. They had a HUGE box of cards from the 50's - 60's, selling for a penny a piece. We dug through it for about two days, until the man finally kicked us out of there! I probably spent a whole 25 cents. No telling what we left behind or didn't recognize? This essentially became the foundation of my HOF set. Here are some highlights:

[drdduet]

Leon has one of "mine"--1927 Sports Company America Babe Ruth, apparently unique variation--the other 1927 dated Ruth has a variation in bio line placements. Picked it out of Ebay as a Vg appearing copy of a Sports Co. of America Ruth for about $300, sold for $5K. A true hobby rarity, and important card.

My greatest "steal" was the purchase of about 20# of "fake" gold coins. Of them about 12# were real--go figure. I bought them online for a treasure hunt for my little girl's 3 year old birthday 4 years ago--shipping was a bear. I notified the "flea market group" that sold it to me, they didn't seem all that interested. Just a note--not all foreign currency is worthless!

[sox1903wschamp]

Not Pre-War but ranks up there for me as a steal. Back in College (mid 80's), me and a few buddies (of the card collecting nerd group on campus) would post signs around campus that we would buy old Baseball cards for cash.

We picked up some nice collections but nothing to knock your socks off. Another student told us they had about 50 or so cards from the 60's. So we were not exactly gung ho about them until we saw what they were.

Well, the cards were all 59 Homerun Derby and 59 Bazooka and in pretty nice shape. $60 bucks for all of them! Very nice and after being spilt 3 ways between us collectors, I managed 15-20 nice cards for $20 including a Bazooka Mays and Derby Aaron.

Also, when I was 12 or 13, my French Canadian next door nieghbor decided to throw out his childhood collection of early 60's Parkies. Being the card nerd from hell in the nieghborhood, I fished out about 300 cards out of the trash as my nieghbor gave me the evil eye. And he kept them in nice shape

[ChiefBenderForever]

Everything I win off ebay seems like a complete steal compared any auction house.

[Mikehealer]

Nothing fancy, but I did pick up both of these off ebay in the past year.
The Baker raw for $42 and the Lake graded PSA 4 for $52.
I still have the Baker but sold the Lake.

[Exhibitman]

Blurry scan on Ebay but the copyright notice rang a bell for me so I bought it. Turned out to be the 1st verifiable commercially-produced boxing card, pre-1870:



This came in a miscellanous "grab bag" lot of boxing cards in an old Lelands auction. Key to the set and now in an SGC 80 holder:



This is the only known example of the T220 silver border Mike Donovan card. Got it on Ebay in the pre-catalog days:



Someone posted a lot of 6 Weber Bakeries movie cards for $19.99 BIN. I BINed:



These pieces of original art flew under the radar in an auction:

--PC Back Exhibit Sammy Bohne



--W517 Bill Terry:

[Tim Fritz]

Not pre-war, but found a program from the Ice Bowl at a rummage sale here in Wisconsin about 3 years ago. In a lot of about 20 other magazines from the mid to late 60s (mostly SIs). Looks nice in my Packer and Badger themed sports room. One of a few nice Packer items I've gotten at rummage sales in past 10+ years.