Worst Missed Buy of Sports Memorabilia

[robedits]

I can only think of one. My mom's uncle was Nap Rucker, the BKLYN pitcher in the early part of the 20th century. Only visited him once, in Georgia,on his "plantation" in the late 60s (I was around 9 yrs old,and he must have been in his late 80s by then). At the time I think he worked as an executive for a bank,but he had a lot of land.
Anyway,he gave my brother and me a glove (which was worn and hanging on a hook in his shed),and an old Dodgers cap. After I begged,he gave my mom his Dodgers windbreaker and uniform shirt (as I remember,he had several of each of these things all over the place in his gigantic house,along with many other trophies and such).
I still have the cap. |
Without my knowledge,my mother gave the uniform shirt AND windbreaker to my brother to sell when he fell on hard times 20 or so years ago, and unknown to me he then stored many of his belongings in a storage center in queens,NY (we didnt talk much then;still don't to this day; he was nothing but trouble.)
He wound up losing his storage place when he didnt pay the bills...including the glove and uniform AND windbreaker.
THis all happened within a month, and I didnt find any of this out until I visited my mom's house about a month after that. She had never told me on the phone about giving the precious family mementos to my brother.
Apparently all he had to do was pay $100 in back rentals. So,in effect,he lost these momentos (along with many personal belongings) for a lousy $100.
I would at the time have gladly purchased the stuff from him for much more than that...but we hardly talked so that was that.
Can't imagine how much those would be worth today,20 yrs later. If I had had them then,I never would have sold them and would have kept them in the family.

[scmavl]

Mine is a little different...
One of my regular customers at my previous job (a bank) a few years ago was Don Thompson, who played for the Brooklyn Dodgers from '50-54. He came in once every week or two and met with me for about an hour or so. At the time, I wasn't really interested in baseball so even though a couple of times we talked about the WS ring he still wore, I never asked him about his playing days (I knew he was more of a "second stringer"). I just didn't realize at the time some of the stories he could've told me. Here's a story Don told that was printed in an online obituary for him when he died two years ago. This is from Game 4 of the '53 World Series:

"Clem Labine was pitching, he came in for relief. Billy Martin was on second base with two outs. Mantle hit a line drive over Pee Wee’s head. He was hitting left-handed, so I was playing him a little around towards right. He hit the line drive and of course Martin took off, there being two outs. Anyway, I saw Martin running, [3rd base coach] Frankie Crosetti was waving him home. I looked up and I turned it loose. Billy Cox let it go or it would have hit him right in the head. It was about that high. Campy had him by several feet. Martin bent over and tried to knock Campy down. Campy sidestepped him with the ball in his mitt, hit him under the neck and turned him a flip. That was the last out of the game. I replaced Jackie Robinson both games. He could handle the outfield pretty well, but he wasn’t used to it."

So I missed out on verbal memorabilia which, IMO, is priceless.

[milkit1]

nap rucker! cool! do you have a picture of the hat?

[robedits]

Originally Posted by milkit1

nap rucker! cool! do you have a picture of the hat?

I was right in the middle of one of the Brooklyn zones that had to "evacuate" during the recent hurricane. BEofre my wife and I left, we put several items into storage and/or safe deposits in case of home damage...the cap was one of them. When I have time to go get it back out of the bank,I will be happy to post a picture of the cap. It's still pretty vivid light-ish blue (was it a darker shade back when he played?).
I posted a pic here sometime back I believe...

Rob

[milkit1]

Originally Posted by robedits

I was right in the middle of one of the Brooklyn zones that had to "evacuate" during the recent hurricane. BEofre my wife and I left, we put several items into storage and/or safe deposits in case of home damage...the cap was one of them. When I have time to go get it back out of the bank,I will be happy to post a picture of the cap. It's still pretty vivid light-ish blue (was it a darker shade back when he played?).
I posted a pic here sometime back I believe...

Rob

awesome ,looking forward to it. Nap is one of my favorite players

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by robedits

I can only think of one. My mom's uncle was Nap Rucker, the BKLYN pitcher in the early part of the 20th century. Only visited him once, in Georgia,on his "plantation" in the late 60s (I was around 9 yrs old,and he must have been in his late 80s by then). At the time I think he worked as an executive for a bank,but he had a lot of land.
Anyway,he gave my brother and me a glove (which was worn and hanging on a hook in his shed),and an old Dodgers cap. After I begged,he gave my mom his Dodgers windbreaker and uniform shirt (as I remember,he had several of each of these things all over the place in his gigantic house,along with many other trophies and such).
I still have the cap. |
Without my knowledge,my mother gave the uniform shirt AND windbreaker to my brother to sell when he fell on hard times 20 or so years ago, and unknown to me he then stored many of his belongings in a storage center in queens,NY (we didnt talk much then;still don't to this day; he was nothing but trouble.)
He wound up losing his storage place when he didnt pay the bills...including the glove and uniform AND windbreaker.
THis all happened within a month, and I didnt find any of this out until I visited my mom's house about a month after that. She had never told me on the phone about giving the precious family mementos to my brother.
Apparently all he had to do was pay $100 in back rentals. So,in effect,he lost these momentos (along with many personal belongings) for a lousy $100.
I would at the time have gladly purchased the stuff from him for much more than that...but we hardly talked so that was that.
Can't imagine how much those would be worth today,20 yrs later. If I had had them then,I never would have sold them and would have kept them in the family.

when I was married, I lived in Alpharetta, Georgia - Nap Rucker was once the mayor there. In the '40s he was a scout for Brooklyn - I have a page of his hand-written scouting notes.

It's not much solace, but at least you still have the memories - great story. Unfortunately, most of us have stories where a relative has done something like this, generally unintentional. My brother was telling me recently that all of the baseball cards I gave him when he was a little tike (mostly HOF'ers from the '60s), mysteriously disappeared when Mom stored our childhood belongings with a family 'friend' who apparently had children who didn't have much integrity. When my Dad was a child, his drunken uncle spent my grandfather's silver coin collection (1800's/early 1900's) on booze. I was dumb enough to toss out my card collection all by myself, when I became a 'grown up' at age 12. Now I find out I'm still not a grown-up

[margoaepi]

I only really got back into collecting about 3 years ago. There is a local flea that I sometimes hit up if I am bored and the wife is otherwise occupied. When I was first getting involved again a dealer had a 1930's era scrapbook of various baseball clippings, and what turned out to be a near complete set of Butterfinger premiums, including Ruth. He wanted $200, and probably would have come down. I walked away, did some grocery shopping, went home, reconsidered, and by the time I got back it was long gone. Lesson learned the hard way.

[Exhibitman]

I will always regret not doing whatever it took to buy a T206 Wagner about 20 years ago. The biggest bone-headed maneuvers I can recall both happened at one National on a Tuesday: (1) having a stack of 1918 Zeenuts in my hand, and not even bothering to ask a price because there wasn't an O'Doul in there [later found out the price was very, very low per card], and (2) seeing a couple of E121 Henry Johnson backs for sale at the same price as regular cards but not buying them because I don't collect them even though I knew they were tough to find. D'oh!

[jsage]

It is not very vintage - but not buying the 1986 Fleer Basketball Wax Boxes at Costco for $10 per box. When they were first issued, they had big supply.

Like most of us, I was a "Baseball Purist" and thinking -who would want to collect Basketball Cards?
At that time most people did not realize the Jordan rookie would quickly escalate to $1,000 for a top graded card...................

[slidekellyslide]

Originally Posted by jsage

It is not very vintage - but not buying the 1986 Fleer Basketball Wax Boxes at Costco for $10 per box. When they were first issued, they had big supply.

Like most of us, I was a "Baseball Purist" and thinking -who would want to collect Basketball Cards?
At that time most people did not realize the Jordan rookie would quickly escalate to $1,000 for a top graded card...................

There was a guy who had a cardshop in his basement that I would go to once a week in the mid 80s...he had mistakenly been shipped a box of the 86 fleer basketball and wanted to know if I wanted it at his cost... I told him I'd take a box if it helped him any...I opened the box when I got home..put two complete sets together..got three Jordan's..so I gave the extra Jordan to my brother in law who is a huge North Carolina fan...I sold both sets off before the Jordan card went crazy. I still remember seeing ads in the SCD for cases of that stuff at $20,000+

[steve B]

Originally Posted by jsage

It is not very vintage - but not buying the 1986 Fleer Basketball Wax Boxes at Costco for $10 per box. When they were first issued, they had big supply.

Like most of us, I was a "Baseball Purist" and thinking -who would want to collect Basketball Cards?
At that time most people did not realize the Jordan rookie would quickly escalate to $1,000 for a top graded card...................

It's amazing how many of us passed those up. For me it was McCrorys in the mall. They had a full island display, 8ft long with 3 tiered shelves and cabinets below. All 86 fleer basketball. I bought a handful of packs, stopped by a few days later and bought a few more. Found out they were supposed to be hard to find, went back and they were all gone. Total time maybe 10 days, and only 2-3 days between the last few I bought from the still full display and the empty display.

Steve B

[mr2686]

First "big" show I ever attended at the Anaheim convention center. Must have been about 40 or 50 very long rows of dealers. The very first row I found a framed and matted lithograph of Ty Cobb with a signed Check dated the day and year I was born. Not having any experience with shows, I decided to go through and look at every other table before deciding that I really really wanted that Cobb. Of course, it was long gone when I got back.

[Exhibitman]

Mike's story reminds me of when I was about 14 or 15 and at a local show here in LA. A dealer had a stack [I mean dozens] of Cobb checks at $50 each. I thought about it but $50 was a big piece of my budget and there were so many of them that I passed.

[thekingofclout]

A few years ago, I came upon a Jackie Robinson Signed Letter on Chock Full O'Nuts Stationary on ebay. Well, they surface often enough, but as I remember it, it was dated Jan. 1957, and this one was addressed to New York Giants owner Horace Stoneham explaining that he decided that he was going to retire and therefore would not be reporting to the Giants (due to Brooklyn recently trading him to the Giants). As always with Jackie his words were absolutely first class.

Even though the letter was not authenticated, I was sure it was the real deal. Still, with cash being tight at the time, I put in a snipe of a few thousand (I can't remember exactly, which I'm sure it's my brain sparing me the pain) and was the under-bidder. The new owner didn't waste any time as it' surfaced in Heritage's next auction and realized almost $20,000. Ouch! That one stills stings.

[earlywynnfan]

A couple of years ago, Mastro sold two lots of almost 200 Negro League signed baseballs each. These weren't the guys you see regularly, this collection was put together in the 80's. No Jackies or Paiges, but for someone who likes the obscure, these were a gold mine. Because $$ was tight, I only bid to win one. I kept about 30 for my collection, including the best ones, and sold the rest for about 5 times what I paid! I still tear up thinking how I let the other lot get away.

Ken
earlywynnfan5@hotmail.com

Sidenote: About a year ago I found out the other winner was Geddy Lee, and he donated those to the NL museum in KC.