One of My Bizarre Card Purchases Which Came With Some Unexpected Twists

chris sewell here baseball card collector investor dealer in that order welcome everyone story time today i wanted to share the story of one of my more bizarre ever purchases uh that came with some unexpected twists we'll call it from the files of adventures in card dealing i don't have any original photos from the deal itself i'll sprinkle in some stock photos here and there i do have the financials which i'll share at the end and they were quite good but uh the financials are really not the story here it's the the purchase itself i'm recalling this purely from memory so there might be a few minor details slightly off but for the most part i went down exactly like this so it was 2014 i came across a craigslist ad for a large baseball card collection uh the ad had almost no detail it was titled something like large baseball card collection and uh the asking price was ten thousand dollars or best offer there was only one photo included in the ad and it was a close-up of boxes you couldn't make out any cards in the pictures nor get a sense for for the quantity it said nothing about brands years players you know basically no details at all extremely unpromising deal at this point because i'd seen many ads like this over the years and usually this sort of ad is a dealer trying to get rid of a whole bunch of comments that he that he's already picked through most likely was going to be a large pile of worthless 80s and 90s comments or perhaps it was a scam of some kind i mean a ten thousand dollar ad for anything should have some details included you would you would think but okay i was in la the collection was nearby i texted the number to we made arrangements for me to go check it out i really was not expecting much uh usually i would bring cash for looking at a collection that's actually one of the first rules of buying collections but in this case i didn't think it was very promising i i didn't really want to show up to a stranger's house who had just posted a shady ad with that much cash on me and i figured if the deal turned out to be good i could just run to the bank nearby no big deal so i arrive and the first thing of note is that the house is huge massive modern home in a wealthy beverly hills type neighborhood i wouldn't call it a mansion but you know close to it chandeliers the works it's a woman who lets me and she's maybe 60 and extremely good health and very sharp she's also very friendly and she tells me that the cards were her husbands who had recently passed away she had no emotional ties to them knew nothing about cards just one of them cleared out as they were taking up space in her house she said that before her husband died he had told her that she should sell the mall for about ten thousand dollars so they were worth more than that but that was a fair price to ask a dealer to pay she was open to offers was willing to take even less just had to be for everything she didn't want me to you know pick and choose or anything it was a it was an all or nothing deal well all of a sudden this long shot deal is now extremely promising a lot of the issues that arise when you're you're buying private collections are non-existent she's not emotionally attached to the cards in any way that that's a plus uh he had clearly been quite wealthy that in theory is a plus as well and she's clearly quite wealthy so she clearly didn't need the money and she had already said she's opened offers uh i could probably get a discount off her asking price she just wanted the cards out of the way uh so again a lot of promise she uh walks me through her house into like a second living room type area and and there they are a massive pile of cards taking up a section of the room there's probably a hundred boxes of varying sizes this picture is roughly what the quantity looked like but it was actually much more neatly organized than what you see here so i tell her i'm going to need at least a couple hours to go through the collection she said that was no problem she didn't even stay with me in the room she went to another part of the house and left me alone i i was at this point very efficient at assessing large collections so i started doing my thing i opened up the first box skimmed through it real fast and quickly moved on to the second box and took notes in my phone as i went with a running tally as to what i'd pay for each box and marking any any notable cards along the way the collection was heavily baseball mostly 1990s and 2000s but generally quality stuff there were certainly plenty of worthless commons but also a lot of rare inserts plenty of stars and rookies and it was a bulk collection but there were enough cards in the say 20 to 100 range that you know the value was adding up pretty quick he had been a huge red sox fan so there were a lot of david ortiz manny ramirez no more garciaparra roger clemens cards but uh there were all the players from the era and it was mostly sorted by player there was a full box of barry bonds cards uh griffey ichiro pujols etc after about 30 minutes i'd gone through maybe a quarter of the of the deal and it was becoming pretty clear that ten thousand dollars was going to be a good price to pay for this collection um i wasn't 100 sure of that yet but it certainly was going that way uh you know i started coming up with strategies in my mind well what if i offer her eight she's probably gonna take that you know what about seven um and i was also paying attention to the clock i wanted to make sure i had enough time to to get to the bank before before it closed and then a big twist a uh second person arrives to look at the collection the woman walks him in he uh tells him the same story that he told that she told me about her husband and uh you know he's young maybe early twenties i look good him and just think uh crap and then he looks at me and i assume he's thinking the the exact same thing um and i've been in this situation before you got two people looking at you know the same exact collection at the exact same time and in my experience you know it's always better to make friends and try to work something out for everybody as opposed to just try to compete right from the jump so i'd you know act very casual and very friendly and start making polite small talk and he says he's really only interested in football cards well that gives me a huge sigh of relief as the deal is maybe 90 baseball 10 football i would have no problem just giving him the football and and i'll take the baseball so so i suggest that's just that and he uh he says okay and i point them to some uh football boxes i'd already looked through and i say any any football boxes i come across i'll set aside for you he goes along with this uh for for now anyway you know we we make small talk he's a detroit lions fan maybe an hour goes by you know i'm flying through boxes taking notes looking like a pro and at some point i'm you know most of the way through and it's pretty clear to me that ten thousand dollars is definitely going to be a go for this collection i would have liked to get the football as well but i'll gladly give that up to uh you know keep things civil but what was weird was in that hour he he had gone through maybe two or three boxes tops i mean he was moving at a snail's pace and he seemed particularly interested in just sort of watching what i was doing so at some point he turns to me and he says you know so are you gonna buy it and i say yeah i'm gonna buy all the baseball and then he says to me and i remember the exact phrasing he says uh well you know i think i want to buy all of it now my mind starts racing you know what's going on here i keep a poker face and i say oh you know i thought she only wanted the football and he says yeah but i've changed my mind i think i want the whole thing remember at this point he had only looked through maybe three out of like a hundred boxes and those three boxes maybe had a few hundred dollars of value in them there's there's no way he could have assessed the collection in any sort of meaningful way you know what's going on here so i turned him and i asked you know it's ten thousand dollars right and he says yeah i brought i brought cash and my heart just sinks i mean he's got me i totally just blew this deal so i asked him if he has a vehicle that can hold everything he says yeah i brought a van and i remember thinking i can't believe i just lost this deal so i'm really upset but i maintain a poker face and you know i start going over everything in my head and it just doesn't make any sense this guy shows up he looks at maybe three percent of the deal and and he's willing to spend ten thousand dollars on it that's just that's just silly so then i start to think maybe he's working for the woman they're working in tandem you know she hired him to show up show interest and get me to pay full price or maybe even start like a fake bidding war with me but having met the woman you know she seemed on the up and up and and interacting with this guy for the last hour it just didn't uh didn't seem likely could it really have been that he just saw that i was interested and based on that alone he wanted to buy it that's you know a very silly thing to be gambling ten thousand dollars on and he didn't come across as someone who you know comfortably had you know ten grand to just gamble on but he had me he had cash on him and and i didn't he was going to get this killer deal and there was really not a whole lot i could do about it but i had maintained a very friendly rapport with him up to this point so as sort of a hail mary i said you know how about we split it and uh to my surprise he immediately said yeah sure and i was very relieved because you know at least i'm going to get half this deal and in the moment i was extremely appreciative and thankful to the guy but i was still thinking you know like what is this guy doing but anyway we proceed and you know how do you split up a collection like this 50 50 well he comes up with the idea to that i would take two boxes uh move cards from one box to the other to make sure the two box was were of equal value we would then flip a coin and we would each get one of the boxes at random and then repeat this process until we had gone through all of the boxes this is actually a very clever and fair way to do it we tell the woman that we're going to be splitting the deal five thousand dollars each he's gonna take his half today and i'm gonna come back tomorrow with cash and pay for my half and take it tomorrow as by this point the the banks were gonna be closed by the time we were finished so she was completely fine with that plan and uh and uh we get started and i tell them you know while i'm making two equal boxes he should do the same that way we'll go twice as fast and because of the coin flip thing neither of us could cheat in any way but he doesn't like that idea he only wants me to make the boxes uh okay whatever so i'm going through cards making equal piles being as accurate as i possibly can trying to go fast and he's basically just sitting there watching me flipping a coin every few minutes it's a a bit weird but uh we maintain a a good rapport and then i come to a box that's all cal ripkens i grew up a huge cal ripken fan i definitely wanted that box it was not a particularly valuable box or anything it just had some nice cal ripkens in it that i didn't have and i wanted it for my personal collection so i say to him hey do you mind if i take this box and and you can take another box of equal value you can even pick and choose what's left and make a make your own box of equal value picking whatever you want and he says uh no coin flip thing only and i i thought to myself you know that's kind of a jerk move it's a totally reasonable request so i say again you know cower queen is my favorite player i really want these for my my personal collection there's actually not a whole lot of value in this box it's just a box i personally want do you mind if we work this out and again he says no no no coin flip thing only and so at this point i'm slightly annoyed and i asked him you know why why are you against this and he says something like well you might know something about cal rook and that i don't and i say you know like what and he says well maybe he's having a really good season and his cards are are going up in value so let's pause for a second because at this point i start replaying everything that's happened in my head uh just to refresh this was 2014 cal ripken retired in 2001. he was obviously not quote unquote having a good season he was long retired and now 55 years old so i then asked him you know do you know anything about baseball and he says no not really and i follow up with more importantly do you know anything about baseball cards and he says he had a fee when he was a kid and and i say what what brands do you know and the only brand he could even name was tops and uh basically he knew nothing so you know i said why are you buying this to sell through this will take a ton of knowledge in both baseball and baseball cards you can't just buy this and sell it for more you know to make a profit off this you gotta you gotta really know what you're doing and it's gonna take a ton of time and he said he had a relative who just passed away and he had inherited ten thousand dollars and he had been watching one of those storage unit shows and uh he had seen an episode featuring baseball cards and i said yeah but you didn't even look at the cards i mean they could all be worthless you don't know that and he said yeah but he saw how interested i was so he decided that he wanted to buy him as well well remember a few minutes ago when i said i was very appreciative and thankful this guy well now i'm actually quite angry i mean he's costing me big he's taking half the deal but not only that he also cost me the ability to negotiate with the woman obviously we couldn't negotiate the price down when two of us wanted it so we had to pay full price but if he didn't exist i could have negotiated down to let's say seven for the whole thing instead of only five for half uh but i did tell him point blank you know which was 100 honest it's going to be extremely difficult for you to sell through this collection for any sort of profit you know you're going to have to go through every card one by one you're not going to know which players or which cards to look out for since you don't have knowledge of cards it's going to take you many many months of full-time work he had no connections to anyone in the sports card world he didn't even have an ebay account he just had no outlet to sell it was just a total mess and as we got closer and closer to finishing and his stack was getting higher and higher you could see that he was starting to regret his decision and i was actually kind of hoping that he was going to back out last minute and i think he was contemplating it but ultimately he didn't he uh he paid for his half and he left we actually exchanged numbers i said he could call me if he had any any questions uh the following day i came back and and bought my half from the woman as agreed uh that went smooth and the day after that i got a call from the guy he has major buyer's remorse his uh girlfriend is absolutely furious at him that they don't even have space in their apartment for the for the cards and he has no no idea how even to get started so he offers to sell me his half for the 5 000. so i declined to buy his half but i do offer to come over and just pick through the his half and uh pick out the cards i want most and i said i'd pay him fairly for those and he agrees to this he basically doesn't have have any other on any other ideas so i arrive and i pick out the cards i want most then i spent another two thousand dollars with him um i paid him fairly and and then i left and that was the end of it i don't know what happened to him or or the rest of the deal after that so in the end it all worked out i spent seven thousand dollars in total i sold everything on ebay mostly made player lots since a lot of the collection was already sorted that way it took me about two weeks of full-time work to get everything sorted and listed on ebay my sales from the deal look like this these uh numbers are all after fees are accounted for in month one i made 1400 in month two i made 5700 so i i basically broke even at the two month mark uh in month three forty eight hundred month four thirty one hundred month five fourteen hundred month six nine hundred and a month seven three hundred dollars really nice uh return on this deal total made was seventeen thousand six hundred on a seven 000 purchase profit of a little over 10 000 and i kept a few cow ripping cards but but not a lot of value remember that did require two weeks of full-time work and my money was tied up for about two months so that's it one of my adventures in card dealing hope you guys enjoyed the story let me know what you guys thought if you enjoyed this or or not so much as always if you have any questions about the deal or anything at all of course leave them in the comments below appreciate everyone watching and hope to see you again next time thanks guys

Channel: Baseball Card Collector Investor Dealer

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Id: f2Vgvwp13NI

Length: 15min 14sec (914 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 18 2021