What eBay Hath Wrought 3: Hometown Hero

Last weekend I found myself driving by Killebrew Drive, in the hometown of Harmon Killebrew, Payette, Idaho. My Army National Guard units drills in Payette, which is about 35 minutes from the town I went to high school in and 50 minutes from the town I live in now. So I had Killebrew on the mind when I put in some bids on a bunch of low-priced eBay cards that had no bidders.

I scanned the back of the card because it shows Payette, ID right there beneath his name. The card was surprisingly thick, but I guess that's to be expected when you're paying those prices for a super-premium product.

I also picked up a couple of nice quad relics, featuring R. A. Dickey and Billy Butler. There was another R. A. Dickey relic card up for grabs with some nice bits of color on the swatches, but the price on that one skyrocketed, even though it was numbered out of 99 instead of 75. I was happy to swoop in and get this one with no competition.

And the Billy Butler has a nice dirt (at least I hope it's dirt) streak on one of the swatches, which is a nice little touch. It's not too often that you are happy to have some soil on your baseball cards.

And up next we've got the card that my Nolan Ryan mini-collection came attached to. When I was younger, the rookie cards of my favorite players were far out of reach. I remember when Hakeem Olajuwon's rookie card went up over $200. I guess a high-graded copy of the card can still run in the $80-100 range, but you can get a decent copy for under $30, and if you shop around and wait a while you can even get a decent one under $20.

So I got to thinking the other day, "I wonder what John Elway's rookie card is going for these days?" Not a whole lot, it would appear. So I placed my bid and got a nice looking copy of that card and a collection of Nolan Ryan issues.