Most prized collectible you've missed out on... (1 Viewer)

[Scott Leopold]

Are there any occasions where you've had the opportunity to buy something valuable, and for reasons either within or out of your controlled, had to pass?
For me, one of the most distressing is the copy of Playboy #1 I missed out on when I was 13, which I've already chronicled here, which is also the inspiration for this thread.
I once also had the opportunity to buy a near-mint copy of an issue of More Fun comics from 1935. I forget the exact issue number, but I know it now goes for thousands of dollars. I was working at a comic shop at the time, and the owner didn't realize its value. He put a price of 75 cents on it. I foolishly asked to check the inside before buying it. When he saw that it was from 1935, he grabbed it back, slapped a $75 tag on it, and put it on the shelf. He was truly a criminal (I'll skip the details right now, but I will say his criminal activities mostly revolved around a topic that is quite taboo here), so this didn't surprise me.
Around the same time, a guy who worked at the same shop for a couple months offered to sell me some Golden Age comics. He had Marvel Mystery #'s 13 & 76, and All-American Comics #7 (Captain Marvel), all in approximately fine condition. He was willing to sell me all three for $75. I didn't have that much at the time, so he agreed to sell them to me on an installment plan. I took them home and enjoyed them for the weekend. On Monday, he came in white as a sheet--this impressed me because he was black. Before coming in, he had looked up the 3 books' value and saw that he was making quite a mistake. Even though I hadn't paid him a single installment yet, he gave me $150 to give the books back. At the time I thought it was a great deal. In retrospect, I never should have accepted.
A different local comic shop used to have used books on the second floor. Most were hardcovers, and many were quite old. You could really find some neat stuff in there if you had the will and endurance to look. During the summer it was terrible because the second floor was not air conditioned, and the temperature seldom fell below the mid-90's. Still, my best friend and I would spend hours looking around up there. One day I found something that piqued my curiosity. It was a first printing of Gone With the Wind. It wasn't in the greatest of shapes. The price was $25, so I passed--I only had $20 on me at the time, and already had over $15 worth of comics. I put it back where I found it, but decided I'd come back eventually for it. When I went back a month or so later, it was gone.
Lastly, my brother & I were at an auction with our grandpa when we were 10-12 years old. One of the lots was a group of boxes filled with ratty, deteriorating sheet music. Most people looked at the first box or two then walked away. The boxes in back weren't even opened. I can honestly say that I never even considered looking at them, let alone bidding on them. Not many others did, either. When it came up to auction, the auctioneer kept dropping his starting bid, from a high of $50, down to a low of $5. Finally a lady chimed in that she'd give $2 for it all. The auctioneer considered it, and finally agreed. Nobody bothered to outbid her. We were standing right next to her as she flipped through her "treasure." She finally got to the unopened boxes, which were filled with more nasty, crumbling sheet music. She nearly fainted, though, when she opened the final box. Instead of the ratty sheet music, this was filled mostly with record albums, some sheet music, and photos. Everything was in near-perfect condition, and many of the pieces had been autographed by they guy who had recorded the albums, and the songs represented by the sheet music. It was definitely the nicest set of Elvis memorabilia I had ever seen.

 

[DonRoeber]

When I was first getting into Tori Amos, I went down to the local music shop, and picked up a couple of cds. I didn't pick up Y Kant Tori Read, because I didn't know what it was. Later I would find out that legitimate copies of this cd (which this copy most likely was, since the store doesn't sell bootleg or used cds) are damn near impossible to find.

Oh well.

 

[PatrickM]

When I was preparing to get married back in 1993 I found a beautiful hand carved glass piece of native artwork at the art studios on Granville Island here in Vancouver, Canada. It was an inch and half thick piece of glass that was probably a foot and a half wide and a two feet high that was curved so it could stand on its end. It was supposed to be put on the floor in front of things as a show piece.

It was very well done with a local native theme to it. I loved the piece and it was number one of four that the artist had made. I was going to buy it for my wife to be as a wedding present but it was $1500 or so and I needed to save money since we we're financing a large wedding on our own so I passed.

The artist name is Sharon Point who ended up being enormously popular after the new International wing of the Vancouver Airport was opened. It had a huge piece of her native artwork on the wall facing the customs area as you go down into it. A waterfall is in front of it. Take a look if you ever come to Vancouver.

Of course after that happened she was a star and the piece is probably worth tens of thousands now and there's no way I can find it.

Damn!

Patrick

 

[Chris Rosene]

Mine was as an enterprising youth with my high school savings. In March of 1986 I decided I wanted to dabble in the stock market and bought 100 shares of stock in Microsoft at about $28/share. After watching the stock rise to $35/share just two short months later, I couldn't pass on the $700 profit in two months.
You all know the story from here . . had I held onto the 100 shares, they would not be 14,400 shares today (with all the splits) worth approximately $712,000
Oh well, I'm sure that $700 bought me something cool back in 1986.

 

[Scott Leopold]

This one happened to a friend of mine. He was in a comic shop in St. Louis back in '84-85 and was just about to leave. He hesitated for a few minutes to look at some back issues. As he was walking toward the door, an old lady walked in with a large box full of comics. She explained that they had belonged to her husband who had just died. She didn't know what to do with them, so she decided to give them away. Since this was the only shop he frequented in his declining years, she decided to give them to the store, or the first person she saw walking out. Since nobody walked out as she walked in, she gave them to the shop owner, and refused to take any money for them. The owner nearly died himself when he opened the box. There were about 100 comics in there, all in near mint to mint condition (unrestored, and in actual, genuine NM-M). The first comic in the box was Marvel Mystery #2. There were several other early Marvel Mysteries, Captain America #1 (plus some other early Caps), several early Action, Batman, Superman & Detective, as well as other notable and quite valuable comics. After flipping through the box, the owner estimated that the books as a lot were worth at least $200,000 (and this was 17 years ago). The lady still didn't want any money, explaining that she was too old to enjoy it and didn't have anyone to leave it to, and left. My friend was in awe, and slightly disappointed that he didn't leave a second or two earlier. For what it's worth, though, the owner was feeling quite generous at the time and decided to give my friend the least valuable book in the box--a Mint copy of X-Men #94 (worth approximately $600-1000 in the condition it's in now).

 

[Micah Cohen]

The original Kenner Alien doll. I keep getting outbid. Bastards.
And the original Led Zeppelin "Presence" obilisk, that black sculpture on the album cover. I saw it once in a store called "It's Only Rock & Roll" in Greenwich Village when I was younger, and I should have bought it. Now it's overpriced on eBay all the time.
:frowning:
If I were a buddist, I'm sure I wouldn't WANT all this stuff.
Hey, here's a collectible for ya:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...ADME:B:LC:US:1

MC

 

[Tony_Faville]

There was an ad in the paper several years ago that read:

1959 VW Deluxe Microbus, 39,000 original miles, garaged for 15 years. $250

I knew it was a typo, in fact I knew it was a typo the following three weeks when it was relisted. Curiosity finally got the best of me and I called. Yep, you guessed it, it was in fact $250 and the buyer was on his way over to pick it up that afternoon. I offered him $2000 and he was a gentleman and declined my offer as he already had a deal.

I missed out on one of the rarest older Volkswagen buses. One that if I had purchased it, I would have been able to resell for close to $25,000 today.

 

[Ron Etaylor]

When I was 10 I got really sick. My Mom was going shopping and asked me if there was anything I'd like as a "get well" gift. Even then, as a fan of The Beatles I asked for a board game called "The Beatles Flip Your Wig Game". Sure it was stupid, but she asked, and that's what I told her. She came home with Yahtzee. The Beatles game was "a dollar more, and didn't look like it was as much fun". Current value of Flip Your Wig Game--several hundred dollars. Current value of Yahtzee?....

 

[Jeff Kleist]

An original cel from Final Yamato (Starblazers)
70mm size cel, WITH BACKGROUND. The 3 main characters Kodai(Wildstar) Yuki(Nova), and Shima (Venture) saluting Captain Okita (Avatar) in front of the Yamato (Argo)'s ramp
$400
I was 17 with no credit card
I got an ALMOST as good cel last year. I still want that one :frowning:

 

[Carl Miller]

Mine was an old Jimi Hendrix poster that I had seen at a garage sale. I was maybe a year into collecting original poster art from the Fillmore in the 60's, and wasn't all that knowledgeable about them then.

The poster was $40, already double matted and framed, in pristine condition. I figured it had to a pirate copy of the poster but I wanted to run home and check my book on the subject to see, so I asked the guy if he'd put it on the side for me. He said he would but only for an hour, so I drove home which was about 10 minutes away.

I got back about 30 minutes later, with my book in hand, but the poster was already sold. I talked to the seller who told me that a guy offered him $50, and that he couldn't resist.

Turned out that a fellow collector and friend of mine had arrived at the garage sale about 5 minutes after I left and he bought the poster.

It was a first print original, current value $2,000. And I was too cheap to take a chance for a lousy $40. The frame was worth more than that. 10 years later, and I still don't have that poster.

 

[Scott Leopold]

Although this isn't quite the same as missing out on a collectible, I didn't want to start another thread. My friend's dad used to collect beer, bar, and liquor items. Their basement is full of some really cool stuff. One of the neatest is a commemorative "train set." The train is actually a string of Jim Beam bottles shaped like train cars, an engine, and a caboose (I'm pretty sure it was Jim Beam). I forget what it commemorated, but it was one of the coolest liquor collectibles I'd ever seen, and apparently his dad had laid out a pretty penny to complete his collection. It was definitely the centerpiece of an already extremely impressive collection. Or at least it used to be.

When my buddy & his brother got to be in their mid to late teens, and really got into drinking and acting stupid, the acting stupid part seemed to take a greater hold of them than anything else. Over the course of several months, they broke open and drank every single car of the train. I'm no expert on the subject, but apparently the value goes way down on these if the liquor is gone.

Their dad didn't find out about it for a couple years. Being the highlight of the display behind the bar, the only time the train was ever touched was when he would occasionally dust it lightly. Even then, he'd only use a feather duster and wouldn't actually pick up the cars. The rule was that nobody was supposed to touch them, and apparently he even held to it most of the time. One night they had company, and the dad was in a rare mood to show them off. As soon as he picked up the first car, he knew something was wrong. While they had taken great pains to carefully cut and reseal the seal on the bottles, they had never refilled them. Had they done so, nobody would have been the wiser. As it turned out, the two brothers were grounded for a month or two (I think they were 18 or 19 at the time). Had it been my kids, I think grounding would have been the least of their worries.