Scammed

Well, it finally happened: I got scammed on a baseball card.

Earlier this week, I thought I had a deal in place on Twitter to secure my '53 Topps Satchel(l) Paige dream card. But after a little back and forth with payments and such, things seemed a bit fishy, and I ultimately declined. Then another user stepped forward and said that he had a Paige for the same price. Things looked to be a bit more kosher this time, and we agreed on a deal. Or so I believed.

To put it shortly, there was a chain of events (including said user blocking me) that made it clearly obvious I'd been taken. Admittedly, I wasn't the smartest buyer here - the way I paid left little recourse for getting my money back, and the alarm bells should've been clanging in my head. So now I'm out what is (or would have been) the most I've ever spent on a card by a good margin.

Losing the money obviously sucks (and it was no small amount), but I think I'm just as frustrated by the humanity of it all. Call me naïve, but I always had it in my head that this world of scammers operated in a cardboard underbelly that would never affect me. I've dealt with so many sellers that have been nothing but excellent, so I suppose I took that trust into other darker places where I should've been more careful.

I suppose everyone gets scammed at some point in their life, and lo and behold, here came my turn.

Still, I truly believe one of the joys of writing is being able to take a shitty situation and make something at least a little joyous out of it.

I've been trying to come up with a way to showcase some odds and ends I've picked up lately on the blog - granted, I wish it didn't take me getting fleeced to do it, but if nothing else it gives me a chance to honor those great sellers who had the decency to send me the cards I bought.

I've been using Sportlots at a record pace these days, so much so that I'm left to wonder why I hadn't made this place a bigger part of my card life a long time ago - it's gone a long way in fueling my recent kick of minor league issues of treasured binder guys.

I think part of why I never used Sportlots much before was that you buy from individual sellers rather than one central website - which can cause shipping prices to skyrocket.

But lately I've taken that as more of a fun challenge - it's been a blast sifting through the inventories of certain sellers and seeing what I can find (while paying just the one shipping cost). It's the closest to a the thrill of a good card show discount box as you're gonna find on the internet.

I've been after the Gulf Coast Dodgers Tiant for a while now, and by some miracle I found a seller who had one for 20 cents(!) - and as a bonus, he also had Tiant's 1993 ProCards issue that I didn't even know about (also for 20 cents!). 

One Sportlots seller had a wild inventory of oddballs I'd never seen before and/or wasn't likely to see again.

A couple good mid-aughts food issues with the Stieb (Sunkist) and Konerko (Frito-Lay), and the Vlad appears to be from some kind of board game that never took off - plus, dig Jim Abbott signing autographs!

Another recent kick of mine is cards from the slew of short-lived early '90s card magazines like RBI Baseball.

I've never seen a copy of the magazine itself - has anyone? - but I knew I needed that Tartabull the minute I laid eyes on it.

I personally think Topps Holiday has ran its course - I haven't sought these out in years & am content to land handfuls a dime box way later.

However, Topps always manages to sneak in a few cards that differ from the standard Flagship issues, which I of course desperately need - didn't think Lucas Giolito's dubious six-game tenure with the Angels would get documented on cardboard.

I don't often use eBay for card purchases, but lately I've been forced to make a few exceptions to that rule.

Yes, I'm one of the suckers who bought the Topps Now Ohtani - I couldn't let the first Dodgers card of one of my favorite baseball dudes slip by! I also finally pulled the trigger on a different Topps Now card that's been torturing me for a while with that Brandon Phillips.

That's the one and only card of Phillips's nine-game sunset stint with the Red Sox, and I'm glad I decided the time was nigh to buy it.

I'm pretty sure I discovered these "Little Big Leaguers" cards through Fuji's blog a while back - apparently they were issued with a book in the early '90s.

I found a generic listing for said book with the common "inserts may not be included" caveat - but either way it was cheap enough that I decided to give it a shot. And it's my pleasure to report that when the book arrived a few days later...the cards were in there!

I spent the better part of that evening separating each card from its perforated sheet, which was a blast since there's nothing quite like discovering a new oddball set.

A couple more random eBay gets - the Fisk was one of the last handful of '78 SSPCs I needed (mostly down to the bigger names at this point).

I overpaid for the Jenkins, but the seller kinda had me over a barrel since it was (at least at the time) the only copy of it I could find for sale on the whole wide internet - still, no price is too steep for a rare Phillies Fergie!

Might as well close with another dream card - one that I actually received upon purchase this time - with this treasured minor league John Smoltz.

It's been a glaring hole in my zero-year collection for a while now. Smoltz pitched in the Tigers' system for two years and was famously dealt to the Braves before ever reaching the bigs with Detroit. This is one of only two cards documenting the future HOFer's zero-year stint, and I can't tell you how satisfying it is to finally cross it off the list.

But I'm still cursed with the mind of a collector, because even after getting scammed - and even with all the fantastic stuff I've shown here - I'm left wanting a '53 Paige even more now!