Garage sale debacle

** no need to read this post, its a bit of a grouse session, and I probably shouldn't have even written it.  That said, I posted it, so if you feel the need, read on...

Things have been going really well on the card front lately.  I have had some wonderful trades and have found some nice deals on cards I like.  Things are getting back to normal, and card shows are popping up.  In fact I had a really good time a couple of days ago at the local show, post to come soon, hopefully.

But... 

Speaking of getting back to normal, my wife and a couple of her friends decided to do the cliché summer cleaning thing and combined some of their old junk in a three family garage sale the weekend before last. They held it over at one of the friends houses (thankfully, I hate people wandering around my place) a couple of doors down from us.

Inspired by some stories I have heard recently about people getting good money for what used to be considered 'low end' or 'junk wax' cards, I send a 3000 count box of those kinds of cards down to see if I would get any bites. 

Well, 10 minutes after the sale opened, I did get a bite, but not exactly what I was looking for.  My wife came back saying that a guy was asking if I had anything a little better that he could look at.  Well, I did! I have a box of stuff that is a step above junk wax.  Not top notch stuff, or I would be keeping it, but decent trade fodder.  Think Trout and Tatis base cards, common refractors, early 80s stars like Ozzie Smith and Mike Schmidt. Serial #d stuff.  Fun inserts. RCs of recent players that have not yet become superstars. There were probably a few cards that were a little bigger, but not many.  All in all, a wide variety of fun and decent cards. 

Not my actual box of cards, image stolen from the googlebox

So I took the 3000 count box of that stuff down and sat with the guy while he looked through them.  Turns out, he was looking for a little more of a bargain than I was willing to offer, so other than about 20 cards that he bought, the rest of the box was left.

Now is where the story takes a turn.  I am lazy.  No, me being lazy isn't the turn, that's just a fact of my life.  The turn is that I decided, due to my laziness, to leave the better box of cards at the sale, I just put them back into the garage itself where the money was being kept.  I guess I figured that if someone else wanted to ask about better cards like the first guy, that I wouldn't have to carry them back and forth. And leaving them right next to the money seemed like a safe place.

With that buildup, I imagine you can guess what happened.  My wife ended up selling the junk wax box for exactly what I was asking, but nobody ever asked to see the 'good' stuff again.  After everything was over, I helped my wife drag the many items that didn't sell back to our house.  And at some point, I remembered the box of cards.  But it was nowhere to be found.  Nobody could find it, and nobody who was involved in the sale remembered anyone taking it, or even looking at it.  But gone is gone.

I was pretty mad.  Not as much because I lost those cards, though that sure does sting!  They were great for when I needed to add a few cards to a trade, or for free card giveaways.  My main source of anger was that someone was so low that they would steal from a garage sale.  And if I am being honest, I was kind of mad at myself for being so lazy that I created the situation that made it possible.

So I am ticked.  And I hoped that writing about it would be therapeutic, but so far, it hasn't helped.  Hopefully in a day or two, I'll feel better.  And it doesn't help that this is bringing back strong memories of a huge card theft that happened to me back in high school.  But that is a story for another day, or maybe never.

On similar notes, I know that one of the 2 card shops in my town was broken into recently.  And at the card show I try to attend, one of my favorite dealers lost some really big cards to a thief recently.  Think graded Jordans.

Not a fun time.  Hopefully I am the only one seeing these kinds of things.  I want the hobby to get back to normal.