Hanging With The Big Dogs...Part I

Long before the latest craze in Reality TV I was a lover of yard sales, auctions and flea markets. I like to collect things. I also like to have an idea of what something is worth; no sense paying $50 for something when $5 will do. Antiques Roadshow, Storage Wars, American Pickers and Pawn Stars are the shows I like the best. I keep hoping that one day while I am out looking for new junk to add to my old junk that I will stumble across the Holy Grail of what I collect; a 1909 Honus Wagner baseball card. Yes. I'm a girl. Yes. I collect baseball cards. And yes. I'm very serious about it. Baseball card collecting has taken a real nose dive over the last few years due to over production. Many hobby shops have closed down and collectors have watched the book value of their top cards go from the Stratosphere to Middle Earth in about a ten-year span. Luckily, I hadn't invested too much money in the newer cards. I've always had an appreciation for the older cards; ones that you could put in the spokes of your bicycle tires, packs that were torn open to reveal a stick of chalk-like bubble gum or to flip over and see that Hank Aaron hit 39 HR in 1967. Call it nostalgia, call it being stuck in the past, but the newer game-worn, holographic and whatever else you can think of to put on a baseball card just doesn't do it for me. Recently, a baseball memorabilia auction was being held in my small town in North Georgia. I usually go to another auction that is held a few times a month to see if I can pick up something for myself, my family or possibly to resell on eBay. The prices at this auction are relatively cheap and it's a fun way to spend a Saturday night. While browsing the catalog for the memorabilia auction I was soon to discover that there wasn't going to be anything cheap there; no card listed for sale was produced after 1980. It was card after card of HOF greats with names like Gehrig, Cobb, Dimaggio, Koufax and many others. And then I found it: It was the closest thing to the Holy Grail that I was ever going to find. And I had to have it...