Author Topic: Anybody have any trading card horror stories?  (Read 4493 times)

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Offline BattleCaps

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Anybody have any trading card horror stories?
« on: January 21, 2021, 04:54:31 PM »
  I accidentally shredded a Mega Millions ticket before the drawing the other day. Luckily nobody in my state won a big prize, but it reminded me of some of my mess ups in collecting trading cards.

 In the early-mid 80's, I left around $25 worth of baseball cards at a table while looking for something else. By the time I realized it, the cards were gone.  I bought about a half a dozen Harmon Killebrew and Willie Stargell cards from the mid 60's - early 70's. At the time mint ones were about $2 a piece.

  The worst incident was with a mint 1969 Mickey Mantile I brought home from a show and put on my desk. I had a drink a couple of feet away and was out of the room for awhile when for some reason some books decided to shift on the desk and tipped over a bookend. The bookend tipped over the drink and the liquid meandered several feet into the very corner of the lucite and damaged the card. Rube Goldberg would have been proud of that one. $30 down the tubes which a lot of money for me as a teenager.

Offline drono

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Re: Anybody have any trading card horror stories?
« Reply #1 on: January 21, 2021, 07:32:58 PM »
I had a drink a couple of feet away and was out of the room for awhile when for some reason some books decided to shift on the desk and tipped over a bookend. The bookend tipped over the drink and the liquid meandered several feet into the very corner of the lucite and damaged the card. Rube Goldberg would have been proud of that one. $30 down the tubes which a lot of money for me as a teenager.

That's why I won't let anyone in the room with a drink when I'm sorting through my collection.  I keep my drink on the floor and only lift it up to drink from it while making sure that I'm a safe distance away to prevent any spill damage.

Offline NationalSpittoon

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Re: Anybody have any trading card horror stories?
« Reply #2 on: January 22, 2021, 04:49:11 AM »
I missed out on a really cheap 11th series pack at the Philly show once because I didn’t know it was an 11th...

Online RawGoo

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Re: Anybody have any trading card horror stories?
« Reply #3 on: January 22, 2021, 05:04:34 AM »
When I was a kid, I had $20 to spend at a card show, and after much agonizing, and wishing I had enough money for both, I chose a minty 1976 Star Trek set (with money left over) instead of a $20 minty Gilligan's Island set.  DOH!!!  I can still picture that Gilligan's Island set   :'(
« Last Edit: January 22, 2021, 05:07:37 AM by RawGoo »

Offline MoldRush

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Re: Anybody have any trading card horror stories?
« Reply #4 on: January 22, 2021, 05:34:25 AM »
Nothing in terms of cards getting damaged or ruined, but of course the horror of remembering the childhood Wackys lost to history, from being tossed out by parents or by whatever means they disappeared, same story as most of us have experienced.  In particular, I think back to a stack of 4th & 5th cards that I specifically remember stashing away in what I thought was a safe place, to keep them from meeting the same fate, i.e. the trash can.  It was the only sizable accumulation of OS Wackys I ever achieved in the OS run, and never being able to find them haunted me for years.  My dad was a carpenter specializing in building cabinetry and wood furniture, and he made a multi-drawer storage chest for my brothers and I to keep our stuff in.  Anything put in there would not have been tossed, because the emphasis was on not leaving stuff lying around the house.  But I think he created that a couple years after the Wacky debacle, because I’m sure I would have otherwise put my Wackys in there and they might have survived to this day.

Offline drono

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Re: Anybody have any trading card horror stories?
« Reply #5 on: January 22, 2021, 05:48:14 AM »
I had all (maybe 30) of my 1st series OS tans washed in my pants pocket.  I had carried them around to show my friends after buying them.  I left them in the pocket of my pants, and my mother washed them without checking.  Needless to say, I was crushed.  Of course  I didn't realize they were tan backs (or the significance) until I got 2nd series stickers and noticed that they were "thicker."  Since that day, I've always checked my pants pockets before doing laundry.

I also gave a Pupsi away to a girl I was dating sometime around 1984 because her father worked for Pepsi Cola.  Once again, I didn't know that it was rare, even though I knew it wasn't on the checklist.

I bought a Hoppy Meal for $99 and can't find it now.  I guess that qualifies too.

My dad gave me a wallet when I was five or six with the plastic photo inserts.  So I decided to put some of my football cards in them, but they wouldn't fit.  I trimmed them down and stuck them in.  The only one I do remember was Joe Namath.  It was probably a 1969 card, so at least it wasn't his rookie card.

« Last Edit: January 22, 2021, 07:31:18 AM by drono »

Offline sco(o)t

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Re: Anybody have any trading card horror stories?
« Reply #6 on: January 22, 2021, 06:46:27 AM »
As a kid, I ordered one of the posters from the wrappers and then cut out the Wackys I did not have in my collection. Little did I know back then that later those Wackys would be plentiful, but the posters would not.
aka Scot Leibacher (no trademark)

Offline lucidjc

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Re: Anybody have any trading card horror stories?
« Reply #7 on: January 22, 2021, 10:40:47 AM »
It pains me to even bring this up. When I was kid, in my neighborhood lived a kid whos father worked for Topps. He used to bring home uncut sheets of wackys all the time. I was given a series 5, 6, 7, 9 sheet. Of course what do you think I did with them??? 


Jim

Online RawGoo

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Re: Anybody have any trading card horror stories?
« Reply #8 on: January 22, 2021, 11:32:09 AM »
It pains me to even bring this up. When I was kid, in my neighborhood lived a kid whos father worked for Topps. He used to bring home uncut sheets of wackys all the time. I was given a series 5, 6, 7, 9 sheet. Of course what do you think I did with them??? 


Jim

Oh, dear God, you cut and stuck them, didn't you?   >( >( >( >( >( >(

Offline lucidjc

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Re: Anybody have any trading card horror stories?
« Reply #9 on: January 22, 2021, 12:09:51 PM »
Oh, dear God, you cut and stuck them, didn't you?   >( >( >( >( >( >(

Yup, and not just "anyplace" but EVERYPLACE! 

Jim

Offline Alexeirex

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Re: Anybody have any trading card horror stories?
« Reply #10 on: January 22, 2021, 12:22:40 PM »
Yup, and not just "anyplace" but EVERYPLACE! 

Jim

 :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o >( >( >( >( >( >(

Offline MoldRush

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Re: Anybody have any trading card horror stories?
« Reply #11 on: January 22, 2021, 04:36:27 PM »
As a kid, I ordered one of the posters from the wrappers and then cut out the Wackys I did not have in my collection. Little did I know back then that later those Wackys would be plentiful, but the posters would not.
Ooohhh, that’s a really good example of a horror story, but only with the benefit of hindsight of course.

The earlier post about trimming football cards to fit in wallet photo windows reminds me of one that everyone can relate to - trying to cut the 1975-79 Hostess baseball cards out of the boxes!  What 10 year old has the skill or patience to stay on the dotted lines?  Not me, at least not based on the few I held onto from childhood.  Cutting outside the dotted lines?  Cutting out the whole 3-card panel in one block?  Forget it.  Never even crossed my mind.

Offline MoldRush

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Re: Anybody have any trading card horror stories?
« Reply #12 on: January 22, 2021, 04:40:35 PM »
It pains me to even bring this up. When I was kid, in my neighborhood lived a kid whos father worked for Topps. He used to bring home uncut sheets of wackys all the time. I was given a series 5, 6, 7, 9 sheet. Of course what do you think I did with them??? 


Jim
I’m sure you probably saw the redundancy of multiple copies on each sheet which made the doubles expendable.  Then the rest of the sheet doesn’t look as good so it becomes expendable, and so on.  Kids at that age are capable of unimaginable destruction, aren’t they?  :'(

Offline BattleCaps

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Re: Anybody have any trading card horror stories?
« Reply #13 on: January 23, 2021, 02:16:17 PM »
When I was a kid, I had $20 to spend at a card show, and after much agonizing, and wishing I had enough money for both, I chose a minty 1976 Star Trek set (with money left over) instead of a $20 minty Gilligan's Island set.  DOH!!!  I can still picture that Gilligan's Island set   :'(


I would have killed for a Gilligan's Island and/or a Munsters set when I was a kid, but there were always very expensive and WAY out of my price range.  Remember seeing a Gilligan's Island set in mint for around $40 which was a fortune for me at the time. I could buy a box of any sport or non-sport cards for lass than $5.00, so my mentality was that for the same amount of money I could have hundreds of different kinds of cards than only 55 of one type.

  My list of lost opportunities are endless, but mostly due to lack of funds.
« Last Edit: January 23, 2021, 02:18:41 PM by BattleCaps »

Online RawGoo

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Re: Anybody have any trading card horror stories?
« Reply #14 on: January 23, 2021, 02:38:53 PM »

I would have killed for a Gilligan's Island and/or a Munsters set when I was a kid, but there were always very expensive and WAY out of my price range.  Remember seeing a Gilligan's Island set in mint for around $40 which was a fortune for me at the time. I could buy a box of any sport or non-sport cards for lass than $5.00, so my mentality was that for the same amount of money I could have hundreds of different kinds of cards than only 55 of one type.

  My list of lost opportunities are endless, but mostly due to lack of funds.

That Gilligan set still haunts me.  I have probably 3 Star Trek sets now, plus a full box, but no Gilligan.  I did eventually get a nice McHale's Navy set from a seller in The Wrapper.

Offline freetoes

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Re: Anybody have any trading card horror stories?
« Reply #15 on: January 23, 2021, 10:03:22 PM »
It pains me to even bring this up. When I was kid, in my neighborhood lived a kid whos father worked for Topps. He used to bring home uncut sheets of wackys all the time. I was given a series 5, 6, 7, 9 sheet. Of course what do you think I did with them??? 


Jim

You win. Of course, these items wouldn't be so uncommon if nearly everyone who had them didn't cut, peel or throw them away. It's like baseball cards from the '50's being scarce because everybody's mom tossed them.

OTOH, George Wright (Sore Mel) saved all his wrappers from the beginning. It seems almost unimaginable that a kid back then would have that kind of foresight.

Offline ToadallyDude

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Re: Anybody have any trading card horror stories?
« Reply #16 on: January 31, 2021, 11:20:32 PM »
I think you guys must have created this thread knowing that I'd find it at some point, since I have some horrifying ones, from the 70s AND 90s...

- Always kept the first copy of each Wacky I got for each series, with only 1 checklist, and ditched or traded any brand-new extras (which worked in my favor for getting Grime Heavy... and I suppose I should at least be glad I kept my 1-16 run -- shy of about 50 stickers -- from when I was a kid as so many got thrown out or stuck on Peachee's).

- Used to frequent the actual supply WAREHOUSE that the Ice-Cream vendors bought their stock at to load up on wholesale-priced gum, candy, and drinks -- we were like the Little Rascals on my street & did full on backyard carnivals and fully-stocked snack-stands rather than just lemonade.  All that time, I could have probably bought stacks of full Wacky boxes if I'd looked on that isle.  It wasn't until 1977 when I started buying full boxes of Star Wars cards, assembling sets and selling them to this old dude at a comic-book shop down the road that I realized you could get the cards, too.  Not sure if they had 16th series Wackys at the time... but I'd moved on to StarWars, so it wasn't on my radar.  (Yah... almost worse than not buying Bitcoin in 2011 when I researched it... or since.)

- Kept my full set of 24 Wacky posters (which thankfully included the hard 3), but used to have multiples of Toadal, Cheapios, and Weakies taped to the wall with masking tape, that later got trashed.

- Found a huge box of Wacky wooden plaques at Pic-n-Save as a kid for 19¢ each... and bought 2.  Kept them.  But also kept the memory of seeing a whole freaking box of dozens of them.

- Had the fleeting opportunity to purchase the original art to Hopeless Snowballs (one of my faves), but only if I also bought Drowny & Jungle & Lumps... and since I didn't have the available cash for the lot, made the mistake of asking, "how much for just Hopeless and Drowny"?  CLICK.

- And some of you will remember this one... Accidentally sending an email to a collector friend, complaining fairly colorfully about how a newly discovered Wacky contact in England had treated me in a deal (UK and Irish Wackys were my specialty at the time, and I'd FINALLY made contact with THE main collector/dealer there)... not realizing I hit "REPLY ALL" when forwarding the original message.  I was new to that particular email platform... needless to say, I totally F'ed that rare connection, and it took me years to patch things up.

I'm very glad this thread wasn't about 'stock market' horror-stories, because those top my Wacky ones.  Remember "Badluck Shleprock"?

Offline toddbarrett

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Re: Anybody have any trading card horror stories?
« Reply #17 on: February 04, 2021, 01:54:39 PM »
While not a trading card, my worse collectible horror story happened just a few months ago. After purchasing my first batch of the Mini 3D wackys, and opening just a few of the boxes I came across a "rare" Crust chase mini. I had been sorting the minis by New School and Old School. But I didn't want to throw this rare item in the box with the other commons, so I put it in an empty box, and put another empty box on top of it to keep it safe. Of course you know the rest of the story as I cleaned up the mess of wrappers and empty boxes a few weeks later. They all went into the trash along with the Crust piece. A few weeks after I cleaned everything up, I began thinking "Where did I put that Crust piece?" Suddenly my mind flashed back to dumping all those empty boxes in the trash.  :'(

Offline MoldRush

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Re: Anybody have any trading card horror stories?
« Reply #18 on: February 04, 2021, 04:17:21 PM »
Another common horror story involving collectibles other than Wackys is the infamous comic book tape pull.  You remove a book from a poly bag and the little tape tab that keeps the bag semi-sealed grabs onto the comic’s cover, ripping off part of the top layer of the glossy paper when you try to separate it.  At that point the best you can do is try and cleanly separate the other end of the tape from the poly bag flap, then firmly apply it to the comic’s cover.  Now you have a piece of tape on your book that you obviously don’t want, but it’s better than seeing part of the cover peeled off for good.  I’ve done that to a few decent books, most notably an Amazing Spider-Man from the mid-70s that would probably be worth $20 or so without the defect.  I don’t have many books worth more than that so I’ve never been burned too badly, but it’s always torturous when unnecessary damage like that happens.  I guess that’s what gave rise to the modern-day poly bag with the built-in strip of tape along the flap edge.  A bit easier to handle with less risk of that kind of damage.

Offline MoldRush

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Re: Anybody have any trading card horror stories?
« Reply #19 on: February 04, 2021, 08:04:58 PM »
While I’m on the subject of tape, here’s one that’s even worse than the comic book story.  Can’t believe I forgot about this until now.

Several years ago I was lucky enough to land a few OS boxes from a dealer I had found through The Wrapper.  One was a 16th box that was pretty worn, torn at the corner straps and had quite a bit of old scotch tape and tacky tape residue on it.  Pretty beat up overall, but I thought if I could clean it up and restore the shape with an insert it would look pretty good.  I knew that nail polish remover (acetone) breaks down glue and adhesives, so I figured I could apply some and peel off the unwanted tape and wipe away the sticky residue.  What I didn’t know is that it also dissolves ink.  So the moment I started wiping a spot with some acetone soaked into a Q-tip swab, that nice red color of the box became pure white.  Now I’ve got a box with a blank spot on it about the size of a fingerprint.  I guess one day I’ll fill it in with a red sharpie or something.  What a dumb-ass move.

Offline lucidjc

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Re: Anybody have any trading card horror stories?
« Reply #20 on: February 04, 2021, 10:24:57 PM »
Another common horror story involving collectibles other than Wackys is the infamous comic book tape pull.  You remove a book from a poly bag and the little tape tab that keeps the bag semi-sealed grabs onto the comic’s cover, ripping off part of the top layer of the glossy paper when you try to separate it.

LO F'ing L   I have a few, as I like call them (tape burned comics)  UGH!!!


Jim
« Last Edit: February 04, 2021, 10:28:04 PM by lucidjc »

Online RawGoo

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Re: Anybody have any trading card horror stories?
« Reply #21 on: February 05, 2021, 03:50:40 AM »
LO F'ing L   I have a few, as I like call them (tape burned comics)  UGH!!!


Jim

I have a Gold Key Star Trek comic like that.........

Offline freetoes

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Re: Anybody have any trading card horror stories?
« Reply #22 on: February 05, 2021, 05:31:32 PM »

I'm very glad this thread wasn't about 'stock market' horror-stories, because those top my Wacky ones.  Remember "Badluck Shleprock"?

Wowzy wowzy woo woo, I'm thinking Reddit will soon be full of them.

No true Wacky horror stories to contribute. The closest thing I can think of was acquiring a friend's clipboard with a bunch of beat-up Series 2's and 3's stuck on, including a Spit and Spill. (This was how we got out-of-print titles back in the day.) You guessed it, it was the Spic and Span version.