Near miss...Cards that you've personally taken out of existence...

[tbob]

You have to wonder how much of a role Nature played in the fact so few Louisiana issues still exist and are in the hobby: T213 Coupons, Victorys, etc. It seems like nothing ever surfaces anymore (last 35 years) out of Louisiana and I don't remember hardly any collectors from the Pelican state. There used to be one guy on ebay years ago with the user id vendomecat who won whatever he wanted. Seems like his name was Mike Schwartz (?) and he had a restaurant and real estate in New Orleans. Nice guy, we communicated several times but someone mentioned that they had heard that he had had business reversals and the restaurant was gone along with most of his collection. Hope that's not true but I haven't heard from him in a long, long time.

[cardaholic]

An old friend of mine is related to one of the wealthiest families in Plaquemines Parish, LA. Based on what he told me, their collectibles insurance rider paid off $1 million (policy limit) following Katrina. Among the items ruined by the flood were multiple Pete Maravich game-worn jerseys and lots of Houston Astros game-worn jerseys, including a Nolan Ryan.

As far as he knew, they didn't collect cards. Most of their losses were apparently 19th and early 20th century art.

Keeping valuable collectibles on upper floors was not sufficient to protect them. With days of several feet of standdiing sludge, everything that can mildew, did.

I would expect that lots of collections throughout southern LA disappeared due to every major hurricane in the area.