Monday, July 30, 2018

Lost and Found, Part II

I'm in Ohio.  I went to my dad's house today.

I emerged with this.


This pennant was signed by nearly every member of the 2001-02 MISL All-Star and Alumni Game teams at their FanFest at the Cleveland SportsPlex in Warrensville Heights, Ohio.

Give me a day or ten (I'm a bit busy with baseball 'graphing) and I'll try to have a clear ID of every signature on it.

Tuesday, July 24, 2018

Good news!

The MASL announced today the return of the Dallas Sidekicks for the 2018-19 season!

I'll be hitting at least a few games this season and my wife even floated the idea-- on her own, no prompting from me-- that we might look into season tickets.

Here's to hoping we'll see a return of the annual alumni game, plus of course a team card set at some point during the season!

Monday, July 16, 2018

Lost and Found: The value of networking

A month back, I lamented missing out on a much-needed eBay auction. After a frustrated Facebook post about missing out on it and cursing the universe for its timing in my being unable to buy it due to the upcoming trip to the National Sports Collectors Convention, I put out a call to find out who bought it.

It wasn't Rob, or Ray, or Doc; but Ray and I did email the seller asking him to pass our information on to the buyer if possible.

So then local collector and friend Brian messaged me on Facebook, asking me about the lot that I was interested in. And a day later as we were both getting prepared for 'graphing the NHL Draft (quite a fruitful weekend, I must say; if you're a hockey fan I recapped it on my other blog) I get a call from him.

He said after seeing my post and frustration that he was hesitating to tell me, but he was the buyer of it! Which actually was the best possible result I could have gotten from it. More than anything I just wanted to know where they were because of some set rarities, like the aforementioned Scoop Stanisic corrected version.

It was an amazing coincidence. I have an eBay saved search for any signed Pacific MISL cards, so any time some come up for auction I get an email notification. I didn't get one on this. Brian and I both happened to search on the same day for soccer autographs on a total whim, came across it, both put in offers a few hours apart, and his got picked.

Brian offered me even better-- there were some he wanted for his own collection, mostly any MISL guys that he didn't have anything from and the Dominic Mobilio sigs, but after that he was willing to give me a good deal on any that I might need that he didn't-- including most of the 1992-93 NPSL ones.

I'm still considering the 1992-93 Pacific NPSL set to be non-canon and a side project, but I have 2/3 of it finished it off thanks to his offer.

The moral of the story: get in good with your fellow collectors. You never know when they can help you out (and you them).