five. five dollar. five dollar jeter.

you are not going to believe this one. i made the decision to add derek jeter to my hall of famer collection sometime around the new year. the only reason he was left out of the collection in the first place was because his on-card autographs are pricey. i decided that it was not a good enough reason if i could plan for a purchase, so that's what i did. i set up saved ebay searches and began to assess the market. i passed on a few cards early on that i probably should have pulled the trigger on, but i wasn't completely confident in what a good price was. most cards are listed as buy-it-now rather than auction, and the "bin" price is usually a stretch goal for the seller, in my opinion.

anyway, i wound up pulling the trigger on a card for the collection in late march (i'll post about it in the future when i get to jeter's spot in my collection). it was maybe a bit more than i wanted to pay, but i was ok with it given that i had planned for a big purchase like that. still, i kept the ebay saved searches active, and looked at the results every other day or so. about a week after i made my purchase, i saw a listing for a card that had a "bin" below market value. i decided to take a shot and see if i could flip it and help defray the cost of the card i intended for my collection.

then, a week or so after that, i got an alert from one of my other ebay saved searches (this one is focused on 2004 upper deck legends timeless team autographs) that a ken holtzman autograph from the set was listed with a $4.99 "bin". that's a good price for cards from this set which i am casually stockpiling. i will never complete the autograph set, but i keep an eye out for cheap and cheap-ish cards to add. anyway, i added that card to my cart and checked out what else the seller was offering. i found this 2017 topps clearly authentic andrew toles autograph 

for the same $4.99 price, and i added it to my cart as well. toles' story is sad but not (yet) tragic. his reported battle with mental illness will hopefully help others seek medical care and perhaps help remove the stigma around it. at last word, he was with family and was still eligible for health benefits through major league baseball. i hope that he is getting the treatment that he needs.

i also found one more card in the seller's inventory and added it to my cart:

that is a 2003 fleer flair sweet spot autos derek jeter autograph card. here's the back:

it's numbered to 312 which is a weird number, but these oversized cards were used as box toppers. i have a ron cey box topper from this release (and also sent one to night owl a long time ago), but the box i bought back in the day featured a kazuhiro sasaki autograph which was kind of a disappointment. like the others i have seen, the jeter autograph is on card, but i get that an oversized card is not the ideal collectible for many. the card was identified in the listing as an autograph, although it was listed as - no joke - "derek jater". any guess as to what the price of the card was?

now, i should mention that i made this purchase on march 30 but waited until april 1 before i received the invoice with combined shipping. i was a little nervous during the time between purchase and payment that the deal would be canceled, but i assure you it was no april fool's day prank as i received the cards, and besides, what business would prank themselves like that? the only explanation i can think of is that the card was accidentally listed as buy-it-now rather than an auction and/or that the person listing the card was not well versed in the market. the seller is a well known business that i've bought cards from (usually vintage lots) for years, which makes things even more surprising. for whatever reason, this seller honored the sale and sent me the card, and i went from zero jeter autos to three in a matter of weeks. crazy.