She claimed she had a large collection of cards left behind by the man who dumped her and left the country. Her finance, she said. She knew nothing about them, but her friend did. She put him on the phone and he described the massive number of cards they were sorting through.
Do you have vintage? That's really what I buy. Pre-70s.
Shitloads, dude. Seriously. There are so many fucking cards here that my head is spinning.
So, I arranged to drive an hour south on Saturday morning, when the traffic shouldn't be too bad. Costa Mesa, wherever the hell that is. What should have been the first sign, if I had paid attention, was that the Border's Books where we were supposed to meet was out of business. Who the hell has heard of a Border's Books shutting down? Maybe not many readers in Costa Mesa. Maybe more of a Jerry Springer kind of town.
The door was left open, and he was standing in the entryway with an eyes-bulging-out-of-the head intensity. My first thought was Meth, but I wasn't sure. Maybe just a thyroid gland problem. The house had no heat and reeked of cat piss. He had just moved in, she apologized to me. Bought it foreclosed. "Red Tag" he said, whatever that means. She asked me if I wanted something to drink and was all pleasantries.
Sitting in a chair, not saying anything, was a massive hulk of a guy looking half awake. Not nodding or anything like that, but just not there. He smiled with a mouthful of dirty FUCKED UP teeth. By then, I was starting to pay attention. A vague, un-named fear started to tickle the back of my neck. Still, a buck's a buck.
The cards were in boxes and piles on the table in the front room. I asked him if the older stuff was sorted out.
I had it pretty sorted on my bed, but then I had to move it out here.
So, we started to go through them. Tens of thousands of cards, more or less all from the 1990s.
Hey, so I'm not really seeing the older stuff we talked about...
It's there, man. I've seen a bunch. You just haven't liked any of it.
He's just saying that shit to try to get a lower price, chimed in the Large Dim One. If I had any sense at all, that should have been my cue to walk.
So, we plowed on. Hours passing as I flipped through card after card, maybe setting aside 30 that I would consider buying (2 of which where from the 60s or 70s). Meanwhile, She tried to be helpful, pulling out one value-less card of some long forgotten shortstop or catcher. How about Bump Wills? I tried to humor her the first 40 or 50 times, but ran out of steam and just gave her the sort of Uh huhs that a parent gives his 6 year old daughter to try to maintain sanity on long road trips.
At some point, I came across a pair of 1986 Topps Jerry Rice rookie cards. Both in pretty good shape, but one off center at least 70:30. I set those aside in my pile and He noticed. I sold one of those a few years ago for $1000. This is when things took a turn seriously for the worse. This card has a high book value of $80, which means, if you are a complete idiot hellbent on overpaying for things in life (you probably shop at Nieman Marcus, etc), this is the most you might ever pay for a Near Mint (NM) copy of the card. These were a condition step below that, and would probably bring $40-45/each on Ebay. So, feeling my usual need to express to a complete stranger when his ideas reek of crack cocaine abuse, I mentioned all this.
Dude, that card books for $1500!
Not so much. Eighty.
Man, I just saw it in the Beckett Guide (which he couldn't subsequently find). I'll bet you a thousand dollars.
This was too much for me. I just don't have that level of politeness in me. I'll tell you what, I'll bet you $1000 that the book value of that card is under $500, but it will be the worst bet you ever made.
I've made a hell of a lot worse bets than that! to which She and the Large Dim One chortled, and which I saw to be the gospel truth. He hemmed and hawed, but didn't pursue it any further (well, actually, he did ask me if I felt lucky enough to bet him if I could flip heads twice in a row, but that's inconsequential to the story arc here).
As you'll see in future posts, there is an inversely proportional relationship between market knowledge and belief in the value of ones cards. I'd explain further, but there's a lot of math involved. In any case, I now knew what I was in for - or at least what I would typically been in for had this complete lack of knowledge not been paired with brain damage, inbreeding, and/or drug abuse. I thought I'd bring a little reality into the conversation and convinced him to go look up completed auctions of his ostensible $1000 cards on Ebay. There were 15 or so completed auctions in the last few weeks of this card in similar condition, all of which sold between 30-50 bucks with one outlier at $60. See?
Nope, his brain was hellbent on making the data support his thesis, like my Republican acquaintances who still try to find ways to make Trickle-Down Economics seem like a great, efficient system. What about that one listed for $880?
That's an overpriced card graded PSA 10 and there were no takers at that price.
Yeah, but these cards are 10s!
No, these cards are ungraded cards in similar condition to the ones we just saw selling for the EXACT amount I told you they sold for.
Man, you think you know a lot more than you do. I'm a self-made millionaire! You should be listening to me. I have a photographic memory and I can tell you right now that I saw that card in the price guides for $1500.
You think I make this shit up? That was fucking verbatim. The man was becoming unhinged in front of my eyes. I, being an idiot, decided to see it out to the bloody end. By then, The Large Dim One and She had come back into the house from a lengthy smoke break. I was starting to have visions of being jumped, but squashed them down as paranoia.
How about we just look over my stack of cards, figure out a price, and I can get back on my way? I suggested as calmly as I could. He stood listening, clearly agitated.
I figured that I could realistically re-sell the lot for between $500-600, so I started at 50% - I'm thinking $300 for the group.
I saw him start to shake with rage, as if I had offered him to kick him in the sack and fuck his woman in exchange for his property (remember, by the way, these were NOT his cards - they were Hers). I tried to talk my way through it: I'm buying a group, so would expect a volume discount, etc, etc. I think that's a pretty fair offer.
I don't think it's a fair offer at all.
Okay. What do you think would be?
This is the point at which some back and forth typically goes on, at the end of which I walk with the cards, they walk with my cash, and we never see each other again. Not this time, though. His anger at me started to become more and more visible in his deranged eyes and he started barking at me again about him being a self-made millionaire (which, by his filthy hands and general odor, I'm thinking was as true as his earlier claim to have gone to USC "for a while").
I started to back away from the table. This is getting kind of silly, I said nervously.
She agreed and tried to calm him down some. If you're not comfortable with the offer, we can just call it off -
He interrupted her, having now boiled completely over. I WANT YOU TO GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE he yelled at me. I'M DOING THIS AS A FAVOR FOR HER AND I WANT YOU THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!
I looked at him and, stupidly, said Well, that was a waste of 3 hours. I walked toward the door with him in pursuit, ready for me to say the one more word that it would take to justify kicking the living shit out of me. The Big Dim One then arose from his stupor and also came at me shouting to GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE! That was all it took and I all but broad jumped out the front door.
I realized that this was the sort of situation in which you leave or they end up hiding the body under the back porch and retreated double time to my car, shaking with fear and adrenaline.
Took me two hours to calm down. That was the worst one yet. I might be done.
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