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05-14-2020 Usually when people talk about having a 'second chance' at something in life, the want is to correct a regret. Or in terms of Quantum Leap, "to set right what once went wrong." Of course I have regrets in the hobby...mostly cards I didn't hold on to long enough, but I hope it's obvious I'm happy with how my twenty-few years as a dealer have gone. Getting to the heart of this story, I recently saw a card on eBay that I've owned before. This Mantle: 
Maybe I've owned other cards twice and not known about it. Or there are some I've sold to customers who have later sold them back to me; that definitely happens over the course of business when you have good customers who are upgrading or switching focus from one project to another. But this Mantle is memorable, with absolutely zero doubt it's the same card I owned before. Of course, there's the serial number, but there's no mistaking that sweet autograph that nearly goes off the card with the minute crease in the top left corner. Even after almost four years, that's the one. I know it's been four years because I wrote this post about buying it. You read about the two times I had to meet up with the seller to seal the deal...you read about the '52 Topps Hi#s...but you won't see mention of the autographed '53 Bowman Mantle and Ford that were a part of this deal. The cool part is I bought these cards raw/ungraded! Other than PSA, I was the last person to touch these actual cards. I'm racking my brain to figure out why I didn't mention these signed cards in my original column about the buy, and I can't figure it out. Maybe I wasn't sure they were real. There are so many Mantle forgeries out there that I can't be positive distinguishing between a real one and a good fake. In any case, thanks to some internet forensics and a search of my Facebook albums, it looks like I had them back by May of 2017, which speaks more to how infrequently I submit to PSA than their slowness. Although they are damn slow. Still no sign of the Mantle in this album though, and I'm not sure why. PSA/DNA deemed them legit (hooray!), and for some reason this Mantle signature only earned a 9 and not a 10. I still can't figure that out because it's bold and beautiful. What I do remember next about this card is selling it on eBay to a gentleman who gave me a (relatively) long story about how he owned a run of Mantle on-card autographs and this card was going into his collection and he was going to love it and hug and and squeeze it and call it George. He wasn't even using this as a means of beating me up on the price. Even after he made the purchase, he continued to tell me how much he loved it. Well, I guess things change for collectors. Maybe he ran into money trouble or started a new project, but it wasn't a lot longer and I started to see this card floating around in auctions. A quick Google search yields only one auction result - this lot from Goldin, but trust I saw it other places too. Long story long, when it popped up on eBay last week at what I thought was a bargain of a starting price, I threw a bid at it and actually won it for the opener. Score! I was surprised at that for two reasons. One, the price I bought it at was lower than I sold it and lower than it sold for in Goldin's auction. Two, everything seems to be going for crazy high prices over the past couple months. Seems like a longshot that this card would sneak back into my possession, and I'm glad it did. Not only will I make a profit off of the same card twice; it's also such a showstopper of an item to put (back) into my inventory. And I'm not above showing off every now and then. Have fun! -T You can now find me all over the web:  Like Monster Cards on Facebook
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Inside My Brain