Tales From FDR Sportscards - This One Time at the Card Shop...

Okay, please pardon that weak American Pie reference. This is the second installment in a series about my favorite LCS which unfortunately is no longer in existence. 

In my first post, I wrote about how much time I spent here. In case you missed it, I spent a lot of time in that shop. This one day when I happened to be browsing/chatting the owner, Fran said she had something she thought I might be interested in. At this point, I had been a regular customer in the shop for over a year, so she knew what I collected almost as well as I did. However, when she turned back to come back over to the counter, she was holding some well worn, old, slightly over sized card... At this point in my collecting career, I was not in the habit of buying vintage and I thought that every card I owned needed to be really close to mint or else it wasn't worth owning. I immediately asked her why she thought I'd be interested and she asked me to just take a look. She placed the card in front of me. It had definitely seen better days, but for reasons I didn't understand at the time, I couldn't stop staring at it. I had often looked at pictures of this card and wondered what it would be like to own one, but the four digit 'book value' told me it wasn't likely to happen. Yet here it was sitting in all of its worn down glory just inches away from me. I still assumed the cost would be the deal breaker for me. I was mostly broke and could only justify laying out small chunks of change for some singles or a few packs here and there. Fran knew this as well. After staring at it for what seemed like forever, I asked her about the price. She launched into a proposal that she had obviously put a lot of thought into. She told me that since it's condition wasn't great that she'd sell it to me for $100 and before I could tell her that was going to be out of my price range, she said she'd hold it and I could make whatever payments I thought I could manage until it was paid off. I'd like to say that I jumped at that offer, but in reality I had to think long and hard about it. I was just about to decline her generous offer when the phone rang. While she handled the phone call, I once again stared at the card. I'm not sure what it was, but something changed my mind in those moments and when she hung up the phone I told her that I'd like to accept her offer. A few weeks later, I walked into the shop, made the last payment, and took this home:

These days, when I look at this card, I can't believe that I hesitated for even a moment at the chance to own this card. It is absolutely one of my favorite cards - rounded corners, poor centering, creases and all. I'm still not sure what exactly changed my mind that day, but I sure am glad that I didn't pass this up.

Thanks for reading, I hope you'll stay tuned in the future for more Tales From FDR Sportscards!