There is no shortage of card collections being sold on eBay.  In most cases, the term “collection” is use almost synonymously with the term “lot.” But we all know that “collection” carries a much more important connotation. Especially in our hobby. We’re all looking to unearth some hidden treasure. Which I did recently.

Late one light while searching eBay, I discovered a really poorly titled auction.  I forget exactly what the thing said, but there seemed to be only ONE way to find it … by searching by category.

1948 Bowman Johnny Mize rookie card

The title was bad, and the picture was brutal as well.  The description? Atrocious.  Some nonsense about a baseball signed by “Johnny Maze” and a few others.

Who the eff is “Johnny Maze?”  Surely the seller meant Johnny Mize, the Hall of Fame slugger and World War II veteran, right?

The opening bid was $20, and the seller was offering free shipping.  Judging by the picture there was somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 cards, many of which were from the junk wax era.

The cards were an afterthought.  I wanted that Johnny “Maze” baseball. I bought the collection for the opening bid of $20.

I waited about a week, half expecting for it to “get lost”.  But sure enough the collection arrived. In two large USPS Priority Mail Flat Rate Boxes no less.  The seller spent $30+ just to ship this stuff.  It doesn’t take a math major to figure out that the seller lost money here.

Anyway, I dug through the cards and aside from a handful of 1969 Topps commons the only items worth mentioning were two decent shape 1993 Topps Derek Jeter rookies.

But like I said, the cards were an afterthought. I wanted that baseball.

So as I suspected, “Johnny Maze” was indeed Johnny Mize, as shown on his 1948 Bowman rookie card above. (No, the card was not in the collection.  I obtained that one years ago.)

But the ball is a Rawlings Official American League “Bobby Brown” baseball and it wasn’t signed by just a few other players.  Try a dozen others.

Check this out:

Bill Hunter, Johnny Logan, Bobby Bragan, Johnny Mize

Enos Slaughter

Mickey Vernon, Mickey Rivers, Bill "Moose" Skowron

Dave Nelson, Sid Hudson, Lew Burdette, Birdie Tebbetts

Harry "The Hat" Walker

My heart started racing when I saw “Mickey” signed twice.  But Rivers and Vernon are not Mantle, making my ball not worth nearly as much as it could have been.  That said, this is still a pretty neat collectible to essentially have someone pay me to take off their hands.  There are two Hall of Famers on this ball, both of whom are deceased. That is awesome.

This entry was posted on October 29, 2011 at 4:04 am and is filed under Newspaperman with tags autographs, baseball, baseball cards, Enos Slaughter, Hall of fame, Johnny Mize, Lew Burdette. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.