BEATING THE VULTURES

 

                I don't know about most of you but I am sure that we all in our places where we live have experienced this dilemma whenever were shopping at any retail store that should carry sports cards. Empty shelves whenever a new product is released & is available in the retail form & we don't want to make the trek to our local hobby shop to pick up the hobby version of the exact same thing or wait for our pickings from a case breaker & we want to crack open something to crave our crave on the new product. I blame the Vultures that crave the same thing we want.

Gotta get me something new to crack open cause I am not a serious collector I am a hungry for the $$$$ cards & latest hot Rookies

              They know the schedules of the distributions of the cards & sit waiting for them to finish filling up the shelves of the new product or they even just wait for them to open the sealed boxes & take what they feel is the right amount of the new product leaving nothing behind for the next person cause they believe they're entitled to it first & they think of the old saying early bird gets the worm or they want it to open right away to post it on YouTube showing ya what your missing out on as well get excited when they pull that rare of a card that some of you player collectors wish you were so lucky to own leaving you I hope they sell it on eBay right away & maybe you can get it before someone else does. Then the lowest part of the collecting spectrum the Set builders which yours truly is a member of are wondering why cant I locate that last card to complete my set cause someone had to take all the boxes from the store & get that hot product sent off to be graded ASAP!!!!! 

                    Now last year I was at a Walmart looking for some individual packs of a product that I thought might not Garner any attention mind you it was 3rd Walmart I stopped at cause the other 2 didn't have anything on the shelves of the product & well my driver didn't want to go to anymore after this stop it was either get something here or wait until ya get back home to find the missing ones. After finding the card section there was the vendor stocking the shelves of the latest newest hottest product that everyone was clamouring over but not me no one else was around the vendor had it roped off like it was a crime scene waiting for the SCCI (Sports Card Collectors Investigating) team to do the investigation on it as I approached the scene the guy said sir I am asking you give me 20 more minutes I am not done with setting the new product but please wait I told him that I was on borrowed time that if I could just look beyond the rope I won't take anything until he was completed. He said he would never understand in hopes to get his job done that someone always has to get something just as he places it on the shelf or out of his distribution box but since he saw there was only me he let me glance & I didn't touch anything until he said alright go at it but then saw me go towards a product that was reduced in price & said if that's all I was looking for then I could clean them up cause he was going to replace them regardless with the new product that I had no part of so said give him a minute still & reached into another box that he didn't pull out reason it was more of the product I was going for & said tell ya what instead of paying $6 for them let the clerk call me & Ill reduce the price by another $2 didn't have to tell me twice so I took them all cause he really didn't want to restock the shelf with the new price & sure enough I took them up to the register to told the clerk to notify them & he stopped stocking the shelf told the clerk that I was good for getting them all for $4 a piece so I bought them all little did he know that I had 20 of them but clerk rang them as $4 for all 20 of them not as individually like he said it should be so I walked out got back in my friends car as we headed back to crack them open. As of this writing I still need 11 more inserts to complete the set from my site hopefully someday I am able to find those last 11 cards. 

Until then I am reminded of what Rogers Hornsby once saying about signing Autographs for little kids "Any Ballplayer who doesn't sign for little kids ain't an American, He's a Communist."