The Great Ice Tea Caper

If you step back from it for a moment, the whole notion of pieces of cardboard with printing on them being worth many thousands (and sometimes we're talking about hundreds of thousands) of dollars is absurd, but people tend to value anything that is rare and reminds of departed ages. I've seen furniture on Antiques Roadshow that is so ugly it hurt my feelings that is ostensibly worth a zillion dollars, so why should cardboard be any different?

Quick primer: baseball cards since way way back are printed in in number order in large groups on large pieces of cardboard, and then are cut down to individual cards. This adds a further layer of absurdity, i.e., why should the 1952 Topps #310 George Metkovich have a book value of $100, when the card that was on that big sheet of cardboard, #311 Mickey Mantle, books at $30K? I would go out on a limb and guess that the relative scarcity of these 2 cards is very similar. More or less identical numbers of them were produced, after all.

However, Mantle has been hoarded by collectors for 50+ years and Melkovich? Not so much. (Historical Aside: 10 years with the Pirates, White Sox, Red Sox, etc., batted .261, and did some acting). So, there is a real shortage of Mantle cards in terms of liquidity. Even if there are roughly the same number of them as the other cards on the big sheet, good luck finding one, and be ready to mortgage your house or rob a bank to buy one. These rare cards are the ones that collector dorks will shell out the biggest bucks for, and are the source of dreams for desperate schemers like me who have been out of work for a long time.

Which brings us to The Great Ice Tea Caper:

I learned pretty early on that when someone lists a group of cards on Craigslist for, say, $100, there is more or less zero chance that it is worth more than 85 cents. These tend to be collections of mass produced recycling from the 1980s. There are maybe 10 cards worth even a few bucks on the open market made between 1981 and 1991. So, after many frustrating drives to Satansarmpit and the like, I stopped looking at those ads and concentrated on ones that listed groups of cards for multiple hundreds, thousands, etc. These, as we will see, are not always made up of valuable cards, but the odds are better. Then the game is to convince the person that he (it's almost always a guy) really wants to sell them for less than he's asking (see more on this in future post "The Jew Fear").

So, I came across a CL post for a group of cards from some codger in the High Desert that included TWO Babe Ruth cards. It was listed for something like $1800, and I figured I'd give a call. He answered on the 10th ring, and the reverb signature on the call definitely seemed like trailer. Evidently, these had been his now dead brother's cards (more on this subject in future post "Necrocardia") and he was going to be in my neck of the woods in a few days. My feverish brain raced. An old guy's cards - could be legitimate Babe Ruths, which, as you can probably imagine, are worth a fortune, even when mangled. I asked him to read the back of the card to me, which usually can save a lot of time if it starts "One of the great baseball players of the 1920s..."), but he said his eyes were pretty bad. He was looking for $1800 bucks, because that was what he need for something or another.

So the day came. We arranged to meet at a deli near my house around 8PM. I got there on time, and he was sitting in a booth with his wife, and it looked like they had been there quite a while, had had dinner, etc. Both of them were in the late 70s and looked like a nice couple. He had a box in front of him, but I played it cool. Never seem over-eager and all that when you're the buyer. The waitress arrived immediately and asked me what I'd have. Uh... Ice Tea. I never drink ice tea, so have no idea what that was about.

So, I'll bet you want to take a look, eh? he said with a big smile as he pushed the cards to me. Yeah. Thanks. I opened the box, and in about 20 seconds, could tell that this was a box of 1980s garbage that his dead brother must have collected when well into his 50s. I tried not to show anything on my face out of respect. What was I going to tell this sweet old couple who had driven to me to show me their cards? I came across the Babe Ruths after a while. They were both valueless Famous Stars of Baseball type things printed in the 80s or 90s. I went through the entire box, and estimated the aggregate value at... well, zero, really. Not one card that any collector would pay a dime for.

I looked up and they were both looking at me intently. Well... here's the thing. This isn't going to be your retirement fund. Their faces deflated. I explained what they had and found myself apologizing for telling them about it. He took it pretty well, but was clearly disappointed. His wife was just embarrassed by the whole thing and bought my ice tea for my trouble.

Sigh.