For the Love of $$$

Money may truly be the root of all evil, but in today's post I'll show you there are two sides to every coin.

The story began back in early February, when I stumbled across some 1962 Topps Bucks online.  Being a huge fan of oddballs... especially vintage oddballs... I knew right away that I wanted one for my collection.

After scouring eBay, a Whitey Ford caught my eye.  As a fellow southpaw, I enjoy collecting left handed hall of fame pitchers... even if they played for the New York Yankees.

Plus he happens to have one of the coolest nicknames in baseball:  Chairman of the Board.  To top it off... Ford happens to appear on a $10 bill, which is the highest denomination in the set.

The seller had it listed with a Buy It Now for $12.95 (+ $2.29 shipping) or Best Offer.  I offered the guy $9.71 and he accepted.

I'm sure you'll agree... not all eBay purchases are created equally.  There are some that I'm more excited about than others... and this happened to be one of them.  How excited was I?  Well... I rushed to my mailbox for the next few days in hopes of seeing my much anticipated package.

But three days passed.  Four days.  Five days.  Finally on the sixth day there was a package from Chase Coins and Collectibles with a 1962 Topps Buck waiting for me.

One problem... it wasn't Whitey.  It was some guy named Art Mahaffey, who was a right handed, two time all-star that I had never heard of.  It was like opening your final Christmas present in hopes of finding a new video game or Star Wars action figure and finding a package of tube socks.

Feeling completely bummed out, I contacted the seller and he explained that he accidentally shipped my Ford to the guy who bought the Mahaffey.  He asked me to ship it back to him and he'd attempt to resolve the problem.

So the next day, I shipped the Mahaffey back in a PWE (with his permission) and crossed my fingers.  A few days later, I received a message stating that he was waiting to see if the other guy was going to ship the Ford back.  He also sent me a full refund, which in my mind (and my Negative Nancy attitude) meant I'd never receive the Ford.

A few weeks passed and I actually forgot about the whole deal... when out of the blue... a package arrived for me with the Ford inside of it.  And if sending me the Ford wasn't enough, he also threw in two dollars to cover the cost of shipping the Mahaffey back to him.

After a few complications on eBay in 2014, I've gotta admit that there's a part of me that's always worried about getting ripped off.  But thanks to vendors like jdchase2, it's nice to know that there are still people who will go way out of their way to ensure that the customer are satisfied.

Happy Monday and sayonara!