Denied

In a previous post, I talked about how progress has stalled on my two player collections, Paul Blair and Johnny Antonelli.  I have pretty much all of their major issues and, consequently, I am mainly looking for cards from regional or specialty sets.  I have EBay searchs set up that send me a daily email with new items. I dutifully look at the results daily, but to be honest, nothing new ever seems to pop up. Just the same old base set cards.  Now, that isn't entirely true, but it is so far in between seeing anything I need, never is a fairly close approximation.

However, not too long ago, something popped up on EBay that caught my eye.

It is a lot of 9 autographed Blair cards.  Most of these cards appear to be normal base cards or insers that were signed after issue.  Most I don't need, but two I did.  I ended up paying $36 delivered for this lot. Was it worth it for two cards?  I should have been.


This first card is a CMC minor league issue from 1990. You can see it on the bottom row, second from the right. The second is on the top row, all the way to the right: a 1994 Nabisco All Star Legends. I have only seen these come up twice on EBay in the last 4 years and I have never seen them in any other forum or card site.  The first time on EBay it sold for about $68. The second time, it sold for $105. So, I consider it a major coup to find it hidden in a larger lot that I was able to pick up for cheap.

Unfortunately, the purchase ended up going completely sideways.  The seller shipped with tracking, so I watched the USPS sight obsessively.  Finally, it arrived at my local post office on Monday and was Out for Delivery. The weather was bad on Monday and the mail hadn't been delivered yet when I got home from work.  I was out back feeding the horses when, between 6:30 and 7:00 I saw someone stop at my mailbox then drive off. I went out to the box and my cards weren't there; only a couple of bills.  There was no update on the tracking until the Tuesday afternoon, when the tracking was updated to show the package was delivered at 1:20 PM..... the previous day!

So, I filed a complaint with the post office explaining a) the mail wasn't delivered at 1:20, it was delivered at around 6:30 and b) the package wasn't there.   And what does the post office do? Pretty much nothing.  The talked to the carrier who swears that he delivered it at the time shown.  I doubt that is true. I live on a busy street and have a fire station next door. The likelihood anyone stole it out of my mail on a snowy day is remote. They said they have a lot of new carriers, so my guess is that the carrier either lost it or delivered it to the wrong address and won't fess up.  But the post office says there is nothing they can do, so cie la vie, I guess.  My great deal is gone.

I am going to have another high value delivery here in the next week.  At this point, I cannot trust the carrier, so I am going to have all my mail held at the post office and I will pick it up there. Less likelihood of something going wrong that way.

What is that card coming soon?  I ain't saying, but I am so excited I feel 9 years old rather than 49.