Letting the Days Go By, Part 3

All righty then...

So, cards were 100% of the radar from the late 80s until 2007, when Henry was a few months old. He expressed ZERO interest in TV, except for sitting in my lap while I watched the Dodgers and giggling when I told him one man was going to throw the ball and the other man would catch the ball, etc.

Something about being with a 6 month old watching baseball sparked my memory and I checked out Ebay. In those long off salad days, I actually had 2 jobs and income, and for my birthday in November, I bought myself a small collection of 1957 Dodgers, including Drysdale (rookie), Koufax, and Reese. Didn't want the rest (who really needs Clem Labine?), so re-sold them, recouping most of the original investment, keeping the 3 I wanted for more or less free, and starting this entire mess!

Very quickly, I realized that Ebay was not the place to acquire cards. Too many people doing the same thing as I was, all bidding against each other. No real bargains to be had that way. The key was the Collectibles section on Craigslist. I started spending inordinate amounts of time searching "Cards," "Card," "baseball" on CLs across the country, and buying collections sight unseen from Georgia and Oklahoma. This proved to be a real crapshoot. I made out like a bandit a few times, but got stuck with TWO counterfeit Joe Dimaggio cards and completely ripped off (sent money order, got dookie) by a scumbag in Las Vegas who is now serving time for theft, armed robbery, etc., all un-related to me (maybe I'll devote some time to this clown in a later entry).

I'd cherry pick out a few, and sell the rest card by card on Ebay, making a few bucks here and there. All small potatoes stuff, as I was full time employed and really thinking about getting together a collection of Hall of Fame rookies that maybe Henry or Violet would appreciate some day. The real illness didn't start until I got laid off in September 2008, right in time for the Great Recession. In fact, come to think of it, I might have been a leading indicator. While sending resumes off to the void and getting the occasional fruitless interview, I started thinking more and more that maybe I should sit this one out and just sell cards until the economy rebounded. Depression was starting to rear its ugly (and familiar) head, and I thought maybe this was the key top kicking it in the sack and running away while I had a chance. Plus, I'd probably have more free time to try to write something again (I mistakenly reckoned).

While doing a couple of weeks' contract work for another company that folded a few weeks later, I happened upon an Ebay listing for an GIFUCKINGNORMOUS collection listed at $50K and not getting any bids. It turned out to be in Los Angeles, and I went to see the whole thing.

Nice young Armenian cat with the unlikely name Hampig (I shit thee not - Ham and Pig in the same name. Definitely not a Muslim) was selling out of his stake in a local card shop to focus full time on his other business. Pretty amazing stuff. All sorts of Hall of Famer autographs and vintage cards. Graded Mickey Mantles, etc etc. All in all, we agreed that if I could con a bank into loaning me 30K, I'd buy him out.

The biggest surprise in this whole escapade was (looking for votes here):
a. that Bank of America loaned me all the money with no verification of income in an era that banks were supposedly not loaning money to ANYONE;
or
b. that Jenn went along with this scheme.

Either way, by March 2009, the garage in my old house in the Valley was CRAMMED with boxes of cards. 2 car garage filled approximately to 30%. Couldn't park a car in there. And so it began. 10-12 hour days, 7 days a week, sorting, cataloging, listing, selling, shipping cards, arguing with shut in collector freaks in New Jersey about what constitutes an EXMT card vs. an EX+). To all of you haters who think I'm a lazy S.O.B. smoking pot all day in my underpants, this is not the case. I probably put in more hours than any of you. The difference, though, was that I really didn't make any money for my efforts. Oh, and also that my endeavor is completely embarrassingly lame.

At first, it looked like a grand slam. I cleared over 11K/month for the first month and visions of making 80K selling cardboard started to fill my pretty little head. But the second month it was 6K, and never over 3-4K after that. After I sold off the best stuff, there were diminishing returns. It became very clear that I might be working for scratch after loan interest, mailing costs, envelopes, etc. I had paid the ham pig too much. It was really impossible to know before putting theory into practice(at least to me), but in retrospect, I shouldn't have paid more than 20-25K. Kept me sane though. Better than not getting a job day after day, week after week.

So, eventually, I cleared it all out. This took about 9 months. I re-invested several times and bought smaller groups of cards. Nowadays, when I buy, I'm looking to make no less than 100% profit, or I walk away from the deal. I am finally net positive, but not by much, and certainly by a LOT less than I would have made pouring coffee somewhere. But, who would want to read that blog?

Starting next time, I'll start busting out the highlight stories, beginning with "The Great Ice Tea Caper."

Thanks for reading.