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tedFirst and Foremost, please understand that this post is ultimately intended to provide me with advice on how to advance down the road of vintage collecting. However, I feel that I offer an alternative approach to things than do other young collectors on this board and want to provide people with an opportunity to see another perspective and perhaps offer up their own stories as to how they came to the point they are today. I hope this post will provide me with more education to get to where i want to be as an Auction assistant for people with nice things. This post is absolutely not about anyone other than myself and i am not taking cheap shots. It does however come as i spent a good bit of time reading the posts by Adam and others regarding his collection. I have no personal ill will toward adam and respect him for his difference of opinion as it is what makes this world great. Although i truly disagree with both his attitude and his method, If i liked everyone's ideas i think life would be lame.
As some of you may already know, I am young, born March 27th, 1979 and have gathered a fairly nice collection of cards ranging from pre-war to early nineties. Many of my first cards were the 85 topps set which i amassed through endless trips to the family owned drug store across from my dad's most every Sunday after Sunday school. I would plunk down my $2 of allowance from the week and see if i could get the store clerk to give me a 5th pack (at 50 cents a pop) free for my undying dedication to the store. My collecting continued through the next few years in much the same way. Occasionally it was supplemented by my grandfather who lived in Mass. He would purchase a full set of cards for me as a gift that i would receive during one of my few trips up during the year to see him. My first venture into vintage collecting came somewhere between 1991 and 1992 when i finally convinced my father, probably the farthest thing from a sports fan, to take me to a local card show here in Atlanta. At one of these shows i purchased an old card that i really liked for $35.00. It turned out to be a Jack Chesbro T206. At the time i knew nothing of these cards other than what i had seen regarding the Wagner. The card was actually in my personal collection until i recently gave it to the one part-time employee i have (i use that term loosely) because he is young (i think 19) and seemed to take a real liking. Not to mention i have a nicer version of the card. For the next few years my father and i went to a smattering of these shows, concentrating on mostly high-quality Aarons. I will not for a second pretend that the majority of these several hundred dollar purchases were actually made with my own money, but they were for us. Sort of an odd twist on the whole idea of Baseball and the Father and the son. I loved collecting and the sport and doing it with my dad, while he did it because he liked collecting expensive things and doing it with me. In 1996 when the Nat'l hit we finally got into our most serious collecting, and my first real exposure to collectibles of my favorite team and player of all time came. Again with my father purchasing for us that majority of the nice cards, including the Jackson E90-1 we have. We got it from Bill McAvoy (www.mcavoysportscards.com). I will attest to no end that he is one of the most honest and respectable dealers i have ever come into knowing. Yes this is a blatant advertisement for his services as i think the world of both him and his family. We have purchased a significant number of cards from him over the years but he as also given me some of our prized pieces. Although he got out of pre-war cards at the 1996 show, he always has a wonderful collection of goudey's and topps. He is a true fan of the sport and a great guy. With my father there to spoil the hell out of me with the big stuff, i was able to spend my hard earned $200 on a Nap Lajoie T206. This has resulted in a trip to the national almost every year since then. After we finally neared the completion of our Aaron collection we started to delve into other cards. We put together a really neat all-star team of rookies (starting with Spahn, Koufax, Robinson, and a few others) and gradually bailing on that idea for any number of reasons, turned it into a starting lineup from Koufax's rookie year. I had throughout the years added slowly but surely added to my t206 collection, sometimes with my fathers much undeserved help. I was in fact able to spend money on my boyz (the Black Sox) too. Meanwhile my father has developed a real passion for goudey's and playball cards. So we now arrive at this point in time where I am a self-employed 26 year-old with a still unprofitable couple of companies with a lot of potential. My budget for cards should be non-existent but i use money i saved from my two jobs from senior year of college (which yes was at the University of Michigan and totally provided for by the Father of Ted Golden Scholarship for Spoiled little brats! LOL) to purchase a few menial cards. However, i am currently meeting one board member for lunch tomorrow to hopefully purchase a few nice cards at way out of my budget prices as well as in discussions with another collector on here to try and obtain some nice BlackSox Cards. The reason i mention all of this is to say that I absolutely positively think that i have a true appreciation for the fortunes of my life. As luck would have it, i was born into a family of success and that afforded me great opportunities. There is no way that I could ever have a E90-1 Jackson if my dad didn't purchase the card for me. And many of the nice cards that have come from my own money wouldn't have been purchased had my other needs not been met by my family. There is no question i shouldn't be spending more than a couple of bucks a month on cards if any at all due to my financial investment in my two companies...and certainly not the black sox cards that (cross my fingers) i hope to acquire shortly. But, for all it's worht i think i have a true appreciation for things that many people don't come to realize until they are much older and forthat matter am the farthest thing from a person who feels entitled to things in this world that I did not earn. I in fact resent the idea of the t206kid who is said to have a wonderful collection of his own, although many people would at first glance throw me into that category.
This leads to my ultimate question, one i have in fact asked in different ways on here. One of the aforementioned companies i have started is an Auction House that should probably be termed auction assitant business. SHAMELESS PLUG: EBAY ID: itailers WEB: www.itailers.com. While the business and the owner are still in relative infancy i have gotten a good response and feel i'm heading in the right direction. It is an idea I developed with a few other friends about seven yeas ago, but due to my lack of faith in my own skills at the time as well as my youth, didn't do anything about until many other business' of this type (although of a different scope) started turning up. Ebay has in fact titled such people as "Trading Assistants." We are not exclusive to ebay, but we due use online auction sites to move goods for people. We hope to seperate ourselves from the competition in many ways, but primarily in the products we carry. We would like to get in what we consider to be high-end collectible goods that are too nice for places like AuctionDrop (the walmart of the industry) and for whatever reason don't belong at Sotheby's, Christie's, Leeland's or whereever. Due to my fathers aforementioned propensity for collecting nice things, i have a good working knolwedge of many of these fields (watches, lighters, fountain pens, jewlery, electronics, computers, and sports mem.) as well as access to the brains and minds of the worlds leading authorities on many of those things (in the case of sports mem. - namely you guys and a few others that don't post in here). My father in fact knows some people with lighter, or watch, or fountain pen collections that rival and in fact exceeds the card collections of what we see around this forum. Many of them have been gratious enough to offer aid to me in such areas. So, what i'd like to know is... what in your minds would allow iTailers to be to the sporting community what i hope it to be. I do not look at myself as competition for Barry and many of the other auctioneers on here, but rather a new outlet for customers they don't really service. Not to mention, I have always felt that, much like toyota does with their business, sharing information is what ultimately leads to sucess for all business people. The knowledge i have already acquired has allowed itailers to succesfully auction quite a number of goods off at prices far above market value. However, understanding auction times, photography, copy writing and presentation is only part of the battle. Also, if any of you have any goods that you feel you might need help with, i urge you to visit the website or perhaps even email us or call us.
For those of you who have actually read this diatribe, i commend you, i am now off to bed. But i would love not only to hear responses to my questions but also your stories and such. I also appologize if this seems a bit scatter brained as it was scribed at 2:00am on a saturday night. Best Regards.
Ted Golden
aka...BlackSoxFan
06-26-2005, 12:12 AM
An Important Question / PSA 1 Thread / How did you Get Started?
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