- Thread starter
- #1
Mozzie22
Active member
- Aug 7, 2008
- 1,648
- 24
So recently I had an interesting turn of events that I thought I would share. A few weeks ago a long time Ozzie Smith collector decided he would sell off his collection on eBay. There were four truly rare cards in his collection that I still needed for my PC. The nice thing he did on his eBay listing was actually list the rarer cards and followed that up the next day with videos of himself flipping through the cards in their binders.
While I was reading his description of rare cards I noticed a particular card he listed as,
"1995 Pinnacle Pin Card, possible 1 of 1. David Justice single copy only other one known to exist. Check out the SCD book."
After collecting Ozzie for over 25 years I am rarely surprised anymore to come across a card I don't have, let alone one I've never seen or heard of. My first reaction was this was one of the two 1995 Pinnacle pin related cards issued that year and he must be mistaken. I quickly reconsidered this because I had become familiar with this knowledgeable collector over the years via email correspondence and didn't think he'd make this sort of error. So I waited until the next day and watched as he flipped past the card. That is when I started to get excited.
I emailed the seller and asked him if he had more information on this card and he sent me this copy from the SCD Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards listing:
The seller wasn't really interested in piecing his collection out and wants to sell it as a whole but he is asking way too much in my opinion (believe me Iunderstand and would start high too). So I just accepted this was a card I would just have to know is out there and never own...
Act II of the story.
One of my favorite websites is a baseball card blog written by Bob Lemke (check it out). For those of you that aren't familiar with that name, Bob was the long time editor of the SCD Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards and is literally one of the most knowledgeable sources on baseball cards on the planet. I frequent his blog often, and just a couple days after I had given up on the Ozzie I probably would never own, he had an interesting article about that very card. My assumption before reading the article was that he was going to reference the card from the above mentioned eBay auction but my assumption was incorrect.
See blog here: http://boblemke.blogspot.com/search?q=ozzie
To sum up the article, Mr. Lemke was contacted by a long time dealer who had purchased a large collection. In this collection were a few of these Ozzie Smith cards and he wanted to know if, (because Bob had actually done the write up for SCD years earlier), he had any new information about this set. Bob did not have any new information but theorized that all of the players in the Pinnacle pin promotion probably had cards like the David Justice card pictured in the SCD, but no others had ever surfaced, until now. He also went on to write that these were most likely released out the back door after Pinnacle’s bankruptcy in 1998.
Again, I started to get excited.
I decided to contact the dealer who owned the Ozzie cards and see if any or all were for sale. He wrote me back and said that if he hadn't decided to sell them but because I was the first person to respond to Bob's blog he would sell me one and I was able to work out a deal for one of them.
Because I focus my collection only on the years he actually played it is very rare that I get to add a card to my checklist/collection. To add one that is 18 years old is very gratifying. My only regret is I only had a few weeks to pine over, and search for, the newly discovered card. Sometimes the search is the best part.
For those of you who have players in the '95 Pinnacle Pin set keep an eye out,evidence suggests they very well may have a card from this set. Sorry.
*Interesting side not*
After I had sent payment out I received and email from the dealer (who is out of San Diego, CA) and he commented that he had grown up and went to school in the same small town in Illinois I live in. In fact, my kids go to the same school he did a number of years ago. Sometimes I think we're just meant to own certain cards. Extremely happy with this new card!
Here it is. The scan does not do it justice. I tried multiple times to scan this so the gold lettering at the top would stand out to no avail.
Thanks for reading.
Last edited:
