The biggest one you let get away?

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Posted By: Paul Muchinsky

I greatly enjoyed seeing all the wonderful items in the top items added to collections in 2007. I can appreciate their beauty and charm even if I don't collect that type of material. That post led me to think about the flip side, the biggest one you ever let get away. I have mine. It was 1962 and I have the pinback bug fully thriving within me. I took the train to NYC and cruised an area where there were actual junk shops that sold all manner of odd-ball items. Before very long (within just a few years)the rising rents would drive all of them out of business. In one of these little shops I asked if they had any baseball items. They did. I bought a few pins (PM10s) for $1-$2 per pin. I was shown a big stack of those cards from 1914/1915 that have red backgrounds. The stack was about two inches high. They cost 75 cents per card, and I said I wasn't interested because I didn't collect cards. Then I was shown a "special" item that was not kept with the other (cheaper) items. It was a World Series press pin of the 1920 Dodgers. I hemmed and hawed. It was a pin, but not a stadium pin. The price for that one item exceeded the total cost I had spent on the stadium pins. The price was $10. I passed. I don't collect press pins, but I subsequently learned I had walked away from a good deal. Please don't tell me what it is worth today. Maybe it is a blessing I didn't buy it, because I probably would have felt the urge to "complete the set".