In my previous article I told the story about how my brother and I used to mow lawns to earn money so we could scalp Miami Dolphins tickets. By the time the Florida Marlins came around, you really couldn’t scalp without significant concern over being arrested. There was even a place we jokingly called ‘“Marlins jail” at the stadium. Police would arrest you for scalping tickets and lock you in the ”jail” until the game was over, and then you would be released. I never spent any time in that jail but I know a few people that did. However that did not stop my brother and I from attempting to use our ingenuity to our advantage.
Over the years my brother and I had dabbled somewhat seriously in collecting various sports related items like cards, posters, ect. So when the Marlins came to town we were excited about the possibilities of what we might be able to add to our collections. We spent a good number of days at the Hollywood Square Mall at card shows haggling with dealers over small priced items. I still remember the time that I attempted to make a trade using my Sammy Sosa rookie card with another dealer. He looked at me cross-eyed and said “Why would I want a Sammy Sosa rookie card?” Of course that was before he became famous for his most likely steroid-induced homerun race with Barry Bonds, but that’s a different story. The point is that back then you never knew if you had gold in your hand or not and you just had to wait for the market to play out. The internet has completely changed the marketplace and landscape for acquiring goods. It has taken a lot of the fun and joy out of the search. Probably an article in there about record store shopping as well!
At one of the earliest Florida Marlin games they began a giveaway that would eventually lead to a series of five pins pictured here
The card was packaged inside of a plastic bag and the pin was mounted on the card. Everybody who arrived at the stadium was given one of these free pins. The interesting thing is that not many people knew exactly what to do with them. We did see a lot of people open up the package, take the pin out and put it on their shirt, and I suppose that’s somewhat appropriate. My brother and I however, had different ideas.
As soon as the game was over we began walking up and down the aisles of the stadium for as long as security would let us. We lost count somewhere around 40 or 50 pins, but at least once per row somebody would have just left the pin sitting there on the floor unmolested still brand new in the package. We did not know what we were going to do with all the pins but we certainly knew that it was a smart move to pick them all up. As time went on that season we made sure that we made it to every game where they were having a pin giveaway, and did the same thing. I believe it was usually Friday nights. And then one day everything changed…
In 1997, just four years after their inaugural season the Florida Marlins won the World Series. After the World Series was over we headed to our favorite card store that was hidden at the California Club Mall. The same mall that we used to park our bikes at before we would walk to the Dolphin games. Much to our shock, and to our pleasant surprise, we found the Inaugural Year pin selling for $250!! And I don’t mean for the entire set, I mean for the first pin!! You know, the one that we had about 50 of because nobody else wanted them and we picked them up all over the stadium, that pin was selling at the card store for $250!! The second thru fifth pins were selling at about $50-$90 depending one which one, and we had plenty of those as well.
Of course since this was in the time when the internet was just barely starting out, we basically had one option and we took it. The owner of the card store was happy to pay us $100 per pin #1 and $25 for any others.. Luckily for us we sold the majority of the pins to this one store before the Marlins fire sale occurred during the offseason. By the time the next season rolled around and the team was terrible, the value on the pins had dropped to maybe $50 for the set. A quick check of the internet now reveals the price is pretty much the same. If you could somehow find all five pins in the original condition you might get about $60 or $70 for them. Between my brother and I I believe the number we banked was $4,000 for one afternoon’s worth of picking up what other people deemed to be trash. We sold off the cheaper pins as well, but the big money was in the first pin.
This taught me at a young age to never assume that something had no value or a lesser value than you might perceive. In 1999 I started my internet business by selling on eBay, which is still going strong, and when searching out items for resale this attitude served me greatly. It allowed me to take my time getting to yard sales and estate sales because I was not so concerned that
somebody else would get all the good items before I arrived. I knew I could find the gold that other people left behind, and that business model allowed me to raise 3 kids while really never having to work outside the home. It is a simple creed to live by, never, NEVER assume that an item is unsellable. There is a buyer for everything and anything, and my brother and I had a hell of a winter of 1997 because of that attitude. Good times indeed!
