Insane!

The following Paul Blair card popped up on EBay the other day. I had never seen it before, so I decided to try and snag it.


Now, I can buy Paul Blair autographed cards all day long for $5 to $15. Further, other cards from this set, of bigger stars, have a Beckett book between $15 and $25. So, I figured my max bid would be around $8 and that ought to be enough to win the auction.

Was I ever wrong. Last night, about 3 hours before the auction closed, I went to check out where it was at and put my bid in. Imagine my surprise when I found that the bidding was already over $26. Even though it was an apparently rare card; one that I had never known existed until a few days ago, that was too rich for my blood. Well, if that wasn't shocking enough, this morning I checked to see what the final bid was. I was amazed to see that it ended up selling for $68.33.


I just don't see the value there. I will grant that seller has a reputation for posting inflated book values, but he only listed it at a BV of $25. He is also fairly well known for shill bidding and one of the initial bids does have all the hallmarks of being a shill. But, I don't see any clear evidence that the later, higher bids were shilled. I guess there must just be some folks out there that are willing to fork over a pile of green for this card. SMH.