Pulling A Boner
Just call me "Fred Merkle"
We all like to brag about the great deals we’ve made but nobody talks up the mistakes. Well, let me tell you all about my dumbest moves. I’ve made my share of truly stupid, bone-headed deals. I wish I could say I’ve learned my lessons, but I am stupid enough to do it again and again.
I started out making atrocious deals when I was little kid. You gotta learn somewhere and I sure took my lumps. My first terrible deal that I recall came courtesy of an older kid, Ethan. I had traded a kid at school for a 1964 Topps Mays and a 1965 Topps Mantle. Beaters, but the biggest stars around. Ethan talked me into swapping them for a group of second-tier cards. To this day, I cannot even look at the card he talked up the most, a 1966 Topps Orlando Cepeda. Trading first-tier hall of fame players for the likes of Orlando Cepeda, not a good plan.
My next-door neighbor, Danny, was a few years older than me and used to rip me off regularly, which was ironic because when I showed him what Ethan gave me, he was shocked. I can still hear him saying “I would have given you so much more.” Danny had more to give. Ethan got his cards from his older brother, but Danny’s father was a university professor and he’d ask his students for their old cards. Danny boy had a pipeline of vintage that seemingly never went dry. He also had luck. I swear, that kid could trip over a rock and fall on top of a box of cards. This one time, his mother bought an old desk at a garage sale one time, opened the drawer at home, and out fell a 1948 Bowman Berra and a 1939 Play Ball Hubbell. I must’ve opened a thousand drawers at antique stores my parents dragged me to and I never found anything but dead flies and roaches. The first really old cards I saw were Danny’s, and he absolutely killed me on trades for his doubles. I don’t think Danny bought a new card from 1973-1975—he just would take me for 20 or 30 current cards in trade for the likes of a 1954 Topps Don Mueller. Crazy thing was, I kept going back for more because I’d discovered arbitrage. I could take the Don Mueller back to school and get $0.75 for it. At a time when I could buy new packs with ten cards for $0.15. I could then take some of the proceeds and flip them to Danny for another old card and repeat the sale at school. I didn’t quite understand the economic theory but I sure as heck understood that my pile of cards got bigger every month.
My worst deal ever, hands down, was a trade I did not make. I was offered a signed Zeenut Joe DiMaggio for a small group of Zeenut HOFers. Joe D was in bad shape even for Zeenuts and the auto was a bold Sharpie blue that I found jarring. I said no. Well, we all know where signed marquee cards have gone. Whenever I see a Zeenut Joe Dimaggio card selling well into five figures, I throw up in my mouth just a little. The reverse of my Ethan mistake: when someone wants to trade a first-tier player’s card for some second-or-third-rate guys, do it.
My second worst deal was a trade I made. A PC796 Plank for a Cracker Jack Plank, straight-up. I didn’t collect postcards but picked up the Plank years before anyway and traded it after Cracker Jacks had some run-up but before all the big interest in postcards. I watched that damn Eddie Plank postcard soar to a multiple of the value of the CJ Plank, got disgusted, and consigned it for sale at what turned out to be the nadir of the market. I not only got killed on the trade, I lost money on the sale because I was disgusted with myself and let the emotions override the facts. I paid a bubble price for the Cracker Jack and missed the run-up on postcards. Now I try really hard to sell or trade away the vastly appreciated stuff and pick up whatever has been overlooked.
I have a terrible tendency to get excited about a project and then go all-in to try and complete it. I rip myself off when that happens. I once got it in my head to collect the entire run of Exhibit boxing cards, from 1921-1966. I am appalled at what I spent trying to do it. Most of the cards were readily acquired but there were about 100 that were tough, and several that are downright rare (mostly the ones issued during the depth of the Great Depression). If I saw a rare card, I went for it, never even thinking about how an obscure card of a crappy fighter from Manila might not be the best purchase in a top-all auction. I got to within 25 cards of a complete run, but when I decided to pare down and sell, I got so little at auction that I wanted to cry.
I would have hoped that I’d learned from my errors, but I still make them all over again. Recently, I amassed a big box of ephemera, postcards, photos, and other stuff. I took it to a dealer to sell and got a cash offer but stupidly elected to take trade instead. I got absolutely killed on the effort to resell the stuff and won’t even see the amount of the cash offer from reselling the items I pulled from the dealer’s inventory.
I even got emotional last month and made two bad deals in a row at a flea market. I got there at my usual 5:30 in the morning and found a rival picker sewing up a deal for three giant boxes of Sports Illustrated magazines and comics at a price I’d happily have paid. D’oh! I was so pissed at missing the deal of the day that I wandered around muttering to myself and seething until I’d somehow spent $220 on stuff that will probably not net out a profit. Don’t do that.
So, please feel free to enjoy a schadenfreude moment at my expense; I earned it.