Tell us one crazy hobby story which happened to you

Back in 2007 one of my distributors used to always get beat up boxes of brand-new cards and offered them at discounts.

Generally speaking, while the boxes looked bad the cards were nearly always fine.

If you remember back to 2007, Bowman Chrome was smoking because of Joba and Lincecum.

I was offered "damaged" boxes at discounted prices right before release and took a couple.

The sales rep asked me what if I get a beat up Joba and I told him I'd love to get one.

So I went to pick up all the boxes and my beat up ones and decided to open packs there and first pack yielded a Joba xfractor auto with a bad corner.

I almost literally fell off the chair.

I believe mint copies were going for like $500 and wound up selling it for less than half figuring by time I get it back for replacement, it will settle price.

I love buying BGS 9s and resubmitting them. In fact, I have a pretty good track record.























Most recently I purchased a BGS 8 Sam Bradford NT RPA, busted it out from its holder and resubmitted it. It came back a BGS 9.5.

No trimming or wizardry here, just dumb, blind luck from BGS.

I was a huge Mattingly collector back in the day. There was 1 card that I was chasing for a little while. Went to the local store and was hoping to hit the Mattingly Yankees Clippings, wasnt that lucky to pull the Mattingly, instead pulled the Mantle. I have a picture at home of me holding the card. One of my favorite pulls, kind of wish I still had the card.

MY father and I started attending card swap meets as they were calling in the 70's in the Chicago area. When I was a junior in high school my father, myself and a older friend who had a decent card collection decided to have a "card show" in my parents garage. Now remember, there were no price guides in 1981 and there was little to no collector interest at the time and when someone like us advertised that we were paying cash for cards, well they literally came at us from all angles. Our first card show we did zero selling but easily spent $500.00 buying childhood collections from guys who, at that time were getting up in age and wanted to see what their shopping bags of cards would get them. From that first show, after splitting the cards in half with our older friend, I walked away with a Koufax rookie, 2 Kaline rookies, an Aaron rookie and so many vintage cards I made a near 1954, 1955 and 1956 Topps set. I needed very few commons to complete these sets and before l knew it, I had traded away my extras to complete the sets.

My dad, being the football guy scooped up all of the football cards he could find because football had zero collector interest back then and he was able to basically get the football cards as "throw ins" to the baseball deals. He found that he had nearly complete sets from the same years as well as some later 1950's cards that were in the lots we bought. I remember him laying out the 4 Jim Brown rookies he found in the deal as well as the 1957 Topps rookies of Unitas, Starr and Hornung and getting excited as he realize he had a full set of 1957 Topps football.

Those were the great days of the hobby back them and those types of buying opportunities continued until about 1984 when the hobby started to pick up steam after the first few Beckett price guides made an appearance and actually put prices on cards.

bradical said:

I love buying BGS 9s and resubmitting them. In fact, I have a pretty good track record.

Most recently I purchased a BGS 8 Sam Bradford NT RPA, busted it out from its holder and resubmitted it. It came back a BGS 9.5.

No trimming or wizardry here, just dumb, blind luck from BGS.

Click to expand...

Congrats, however your post obviously doesn't shed a good eye on BGS

Here's another one of mine.

Back at the start when Oliver Perez was pretty hot with the Mets, I sold an autographed rookie of his.

The card was numbered and I wrote the serial number on the soft sleeve along with "rookie".

Obviously Perez never amounted to anything with the Mets, but years later as I was digging through a game used autograph discount box at the national, I came across the exact same card sitting in the exact same plastic with my hand writing on it.

Sent from my HTCONE using Freedom Card Board mobile app

back in 98 or 99, I was at my LCS, They just got in Donruss Elite football.
Bought a box for $75.00 and pulled a Barry Sanders Auto, there was another customer in the store and asked if I would sell it, well, I asked the store owner first if it was ok and he said yes,
Sold it for $500, After that guy left and I bought another box and pulled another Barry Sanders Auto and a peyton Manning Diecut #/9,
Took the 2 boxes of cards to a card show happening that day and 2 dealers at their table bought all the cards from the 2 boxes and the Barry Sanders & Manning card for $900...
so for an original $75 investment, I profited $750 profit with 2 boxes!
That is what got me hooked on busting wax to sell . lol

In early June, 1991 I walked into a 7-11, bought a pack of cards, first in 4 years, and just my second in 9 years, and 24 years later I'm poor but have an awesome collection.

1999 All-Star Fanfest in Boston.

I bought a box of 1999 Bowman Chrome and pulled a Pat Burrell Refractor RC (the best series 1 RC at the time.) The seller of the box offered to buy it for $40. I thought it was fair so I sold it to him. Throughout the day, I was kind of regretting selling my best RC pull ever.

Later on in the day I was circling back around and saw that he had it in his showcase labeled "Not For Sale." I asked him about it, and he said he was glad that I came back. Upon closer examination, he discovered it was actually a Golden Anniversary Refractor #d /25, and he wanted to give me the chance to buy it back for $40, or sell it to him for a more fair price. (He actually had a list of phone numbers and email addresses of people who made offers on it.) It was refreshing that he had enough integrity to not [intentionally] screw over a 16 year old kid. So I had him call one of the people who offered on it, and split the money with him... (About $500 to each of us). He ended up throwing in another box of Bowman Chrome.

A few years ago, I had my wisdom teeth out at the age of 33 (I know). After the "operation", my wife bought me stuff to help me recover, and one thing was an old hobby box of 2008 Topps 1 that she found at a local retail store. I thanked her but internally rolled my eyes knowing she probably paid $59.99 for a box that you could get online for roughly half that.

But in my face, since I pulled one of my best single-box pulls ever:

K-Mart, winter of '99 / '00. Boxes of hobby were there, for $19.99. I saw a couple '96 UD Football. Solid RC's, cool inserts & a glimmer of hope to pull the first licensed jersey cards !?!? Absolutely ! So, I picked one out and back to Ely I drove. I plopped myself on my bed and then started busting, all the while, doing it in the Don West & Kenny Goldin voices. Hit a few nice cards (a Terrell Davis T.V. Cel, a Keyshawn / Terry Glenn back to back gold and a glut of RC's and inserts. About 3/4 of the way through, I slid the pack, seeing & feeling something thicker. I thought, this can't be. Slowly revealing the cards, out popped a Mark Brunell GU Jersey card. Absolutely my best pull (up until a year later, that story to follow).

Next story is when a guy & I were coming back from Champaign / Urbana, where we dropped of a log so that some society could craft a canoe out of it and deliver it to the Lewis & Clark museum in St. Louis. On the way back, we swung through the southern part of the Twin Cities, where there was a card shop. I figured, I'd driven a bit, let's stop, eat and pick up a pack of cards. I had no luck in Illinois, on the way down, so figured, this HAS to be better. Series 2 Topps had just dropped and with the store being a HTA store, I figured a pack of Topps it was, since Ichiro was in it and there was an absolute remote chance, again, to pull original Mickey Mantle's from yesteryear. Well, we got back to the van, I started opening the packs and I immediately saw something different than the green bordered cards... got to that card and saw it was a 1963 Topps Mantle #200 . I nearly **** myself ... collecting my breath, I continued on, as there was still like 6 cards left. The next card ? Ichiro RC card. Unreal pack and NEVER have come close to hitting something that major in wax to this day.

[MENTION=3478]bradical[/MENTION] , are you busting the cases and send raw or sending them in as a resub?
[MENTION=11496]goobmcnasty[/MENTION] , very cool story. Great move by the dealer.

My "craziest" I can remember because of the odds was grabbing a box of 1991 Donruss at Costco (was named something else back then I believe) and hitting 4 1991 Elite Legend Nolan Ryan's. I was offer big $ ($500+ each) for them , big trades including Jordan RCs etc. but my dad didn't want me to move them. So I finally traded one for a decent trade (some 94 SP Red Holo Diecuts that were hot), but the other two I sold for $90-100 I think each. I still have one I held on for nostalgia.

Ryan

I was at a local card shop here in Memphis. I bought some Jeter cards and a 68 Mantle. One of my favorite all time cards. He had a box sitting on his top shelf, 97 Totally Certified. His price was $75 but he knocked off $10 since I bought other cards. He told me about the product and that he had busted a few boxes and he never pulled a Mirror Gold. So about half way through the box I pulled a Ryan Sandberg Mirror Gold/30. I was really excited and he seemed a little upset. We laughed about it and I asked him if he wanted to buy it, he said no. I went home and listed it on eBay in auction. In the first 30 mins I had several emails. I guy offered $50 then he offered $100. I got another email for $250. I agreed and sold it to him direct. Then the first guy who offered $100 said he would give me $400 for it but I said it was sold and he wasn't to happy. The guy who bought it had it graded and it was BGS 9.5. I saw it listed a few months later for $2000 OBO. Not sure if it ever sold. Best pull out of a box for me!

Lots of cool stories guys!

Mine is pretty boring I suppose. Back when I was trading all my comics off, the guy I was trading them to would swap me either wax or old singles for them. By that time I had already been through most of his singles from 68-87 baseball and football(I was trying to put sets together). So he gave me the website he used to buy wax from and basically told me to pick wax out I wanted. We're talking stuff from 2000-2007. Well I picked out like 6 boxes. Three of them came in and he brought them to me. I pulled three Travis Hafner autos, one out of each box(UD elements, 05 DK, and 2006 Ginter). I thought he was decent but was kinda upset at pulling the same guy.

Thought that was weird enough until I got three more boxes in from the guy(2007 SPX, 2007 UD premier, and 2007 Fleer ultra SE), and pulled two Ripken JR autos and a Ripken 1/1 out of the boxes.

I also pulled a David Wright auto and then a plate from two consecutive boxes of different products. Kinda weird how I get on rolls like that.

I don’t know how crazy this is, but it was the first thing that came to mind:

From ’98 to ’02, I worked in DC with a guy who was big into football and hockey cards while I had transitioned into more of a baseball-only guy by that point. I would routinely give him any Avalanche or Bronco cards (he was from Denver) I’d find amongst my “mess” and he’d occasionally give me a baseball card or two. Anyway…when 2000 SP Authentic football came out, he bought an entire case of it (at the time I thought he was insane, LOL). He said that if I wanted to buy a box of it that he’d give me a really good price. I said what the heck and bought a box off of him for around $60 (if memory serves) and put it away with all my other random unopened boxes.

Fast forward to 2007 and the Patriots were on a big-time roll going into the playoffs. I dug out most of my “good” Patriots cards (including several Brady lower-end RCs) and sold them on eBay. I made a nice chunk of change on cards I had no real interest in anymore. Then I remembered that I had that unopened box of SP Authentic. I remember trying to decide whether to list it on eBay as-is, or just bust it open and see if I could hit the lottery. Keep in mind that I don’t sell a whole lot, even to this day. Since I already made some money on those other cards, I decided to just bust the box open. I’m sure you guessed where this is going…the lone Future Watch card in the box was none other than Tom Brady!

I sold it on the bay (raw) for more than $1400 during the playoffs.
(For the longest time after the Giants ended the Patriots’ undefeated season bid, I was afraid of getting a message from the buyer. I never got one. Whew! LOL)

I Wouldn't Know Where To Start..............................

It was sometime in 2000 and I was a brand new father. I slowed down on card buying with our new addition to the family. I took a lot of time off to help out my wife that year so my OT at work slowed down. Well I treated myself to a box of UD and I ended up pulling a Roberto Clemente 3000 hit bat card. Bat cards back then were a newer thing and I quickly listed it on eBay and sold it for just under $900. A short time after I was working 3rd shift with a co-worker and told him all about my quick buck I made off the deal. After work him and I stopped at Kmart because he collected Hot Wheels and we would stop there once a week when the new cars would be put out to look for Treasure Hunts. We were in line to pay for some cars and I saw the same packs of UD that I pulled the Clemente card. I told him "this was the brand I pulled that card from" as the woman was cashing me out she said "did you want that pack too"? Not really wanting it I went ahead and purchased it. As we were walking to our cars I ripped it and there it was....another Clemente card. It went straight to eBay and I got just under $700 for this one. The cash really helped out at home and I never had any pulls like this again other than a Jeter auto. This same Clemente card is on eBay now for a BIN of $80.00.

goobmcnasty said:

I bought a box of 1999 Bowman Chrome and pulled a Pat Burrell Refractor RC (the best series 1 RC at the time.) The seller of the box offered to buy it for $40. I thought it was fair so I sold it to him. Throughout the day, I was kind of regretting selling my best RC pull ever.

Later on in the day I was circling back around and saw that he had it in his showcase labeled "Not For Sale." I asked him about it, and he said he was glad that I came back. Upon closer examination, he discovered it was actually a Golden Anniversary Refractor #d /25, and he wanted to give me the chance to buy it back for $40, or sell it to him for a more fair price. (He actually had a list of phone numbers and email addresses of people who made offers on it.) It was refreshing that he had enough integrity to not [intentionally] screw over a 16 year old kid. So I had him call one of the people who offered on it, and split the money with him... (About $500 to each of us). He ended up throwing in another box of Bowman Chrome.

Click to expand...

One of my favorite stories ever, thanks for posting it!

AmishDave said:

K-Mart, winter of '99 / '00. Boxes of hobby were there, for $19.99. I saw a couple '96 UD Football. Solid RC's, cool inserts & a glimmer of hope to pull the first licensed jersey cards !?!? Absolutely ! So, I picked one out and back to Ely I drove. I plopped myself on my bed and then started busting, all the while, doing it in the Don West & Kenny Goldin voices. Hit a few nice cards (a Terrell Davis T.V. Cel, a Keyshawn / Terry Glenn back to back gold and a glut of RC's and inserts. About 3/4 of the way through, I slid the pack, seeing & feeling something thicker. I thought, this can't be. Slowly revealing the cards, out popped a Mark Brunell GU Jersey card. Absolutely my best pull (up until a year later, that story to follow).

Next story is when a guy & I were coming back from Champaign / Urbana, where we dropped of a log so that some society could craft a canoe out of it and deliver it to the Lewis & Clark museum in St. Louis. On the way back, we swung through the southern part of the Twin Cities, where there was a card shop. I figured, I'd driven a bit, let's stop, eat and pick up a pack of cards. I had no luck in Illinois, on the way down, so figured, this HAS to be better. Series 2 Topps had just dropped and with the store being a HTA store, I figured a pack of Topps it was, since Ichiro was in it and there was an absolute remote chance, again, to pull original Mickey Mantle's from yesteryear. Well, we got back to the van, I started opening the packs and I immediately saw something different than the green bordered cards... got to that card and saw it was a 1963 Topps Mantle #200 . I nearly **** myself ... collecting my breath, I continued on, as there was still like 6 cards left. The next card ? Ichiro RC card. Unreal pack and NEVER have come close to hitting something that major in wax to this day.

Click to expand...

Great stories! I have to be honest, though. When I read the bolded part, I asked myself "Is he really going to tell us about a poop he took?"

goobmcnasty said:

1999 All-Star Fanfest in Boston.

I bought a box of 1999 Bowman Chrome and pulled a Pat Burrell Refractor RC (the best series 1 RC at the time.) The seller of the box offered to buy it for $40. I thought it was fair so I sold it to him. Throughout the day, I was kind of regretting selling my best RC pull ever.

Later on in the day I was circling back around and saw that he had it in his showcase labeled "Not For Sale." I asked him about it, and he said he was glad that I came back. Upon closer examination, he discovered it was actually a Golden Anniversary Refractor #d /25, and he wanted to give me the chance to buy it back for $40, or sell it to him for a more fair price. (He actually had a list of phone numbers and email addresses of people who made offers on it.) It was refreshing that he had enough integrity to not [intentionally] screw over a 16 year old kid. So I had him call one of the people who offered on it, and split the money with him... (About $500 to each of us). He ended up throwing in another box of Bowman Chrome.

Click to expand...

Excellent!