Someone on eBay is dumber than me

The lesson, apparently, is never to let the vintage guy loose amongst the shinies.

Ever since I was given the shiny Alex Rios in a trade from Shane at Shoebox Legends, I had been thinking it would be pretty awesome to score another one.  There didn’t seem to be any more Blue Jays from that particular set, so I shelved the notion for a bit.

Then I saw it (cue relevatory music):

Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiny… (image pilfered from the bay)

It was a Lawrie.   On a ’71.  It was magic.

And it was SHINY – oh so very, very shiny.

Most of the Lawrie parallels from that set were this flat-looking gold colour.  A tad lame-looking, actually.  This, however, this was a rainbow.  It was clearly very special.  Unique, too.  None of the rest looked like this one.  It had to be the rarity amongst the rarities.

I bit.  Threw a bid down.  Waited.

In the last day of the auction, though, I found that I had competition.  My bid wasn’t enough.  In my frenzy not to lose the most fabulous Lawrie ever in existence, I forgot everything I ever knew about eBay.  We got into a back and forth bidding war.  Higher, higher went the price.  I’d be ahead, then behind, then ahead again.

All the while, a this little voice was saying something in the back of my mind: “These things don’t scan.  These things don’t scan.”

I ignored that voice.  I had a picture that showed this one was different from the rest.  I had to have it.  Back and forth went the bidding.

Finally, I put in a bid and there was silence.  My competitor was backing off.  I debated topping up my bid to protect myself from the last-second snipe.

“These things don’t scan,” said the voice.

“You’re a moron,” it added, helpfully.

I decided at that point that I didn’t want to spend another cent on something where I hadn’t checked just how hard to find it really was.  This is sometimes risky.  I missed out on a ’71 OPC Clemente because I had no clue at the time how special a card it was.  Here, though, I thought I’d go do some homework.  If my rival wanted to snipe me, he could have it.

He did.  The knockout bid came with 2 seconds to go, and Magic Brett went away, never to return.  In the meantime, I went and checked and to my everlasting relief, this card was not all that unusual and certainly not that pricey.  It just doesn’t scan.

I jumped on a Buy It Now card for a smallish fraction of what I’d been bidding minutes earlier.  A week or so later, it arrived.  It was beautiful, majestic, rainbow-toned and shiny, oh, so shiny.

Also shiny and awesome, just not so apparent in this format.

And you just have to trust me about that because it doesn’t scan worth a damn.

Not particularly shiny. If this was OPC, it would be as yellow as the front.