Update: Ebay Oops Sort Of

EBAY Oops Sort Of: An Update

Well I got a bit of a surprise on this almost mistake. A while back try late April last year (2017) I made a bid on Ebay for an autographed Wes Unseld Basketball trading card that was coming from China! I originally had missed that part. When I did notice it upon seeing the "item has been shipped" notice I started to get concerned. What with all the counterfeit cards that come out of Asia, and the various shipping problems people have had with stuff coming from overseas yadda, yadda, yadda I thought I would have to chalk this one off as a loss.

Just as sometime between late September to late December of 2016 when I had two packages that I suspect were snatched from my apartment's front door step. I thought that this would never arrive. Of the two missing packages from 2016 one I know for a fact was actually delivered because I was given a tracking number and after a few days I checked on a Thursday to check on the status of the package and it said the package had been delivered to the unit on that Monday. That one stinks because it was a full Score 1989 Baseball set. The other package was supposed to be 600 Nationals cards from a trade never got a tracking number but it sounded like it was shipped around the time I had shipped out my end of other teams for them. But I digress.

I started the tale of these cards back in April on this my regular blog because I needed to post something that month here for my minimal personal posting quota of one post per month. It so happened that this drama that ended up being non-drama and nothing to worry about was what was going on in my life at that particular moment.

Anyway since this is a card related story it is posted Here on: CaptKirk42's Trading Cards Blog. OK so the story was explained mostly here on my regular blog, but the bigger pictures of the card is on the card blog.

Ebay Oops Sort Of

The other day I bid on an auction at Ebay in a knee-jerk reaction. Hunting for a similar item that I had already won an auction on earlier in the day. The items I bid on were autograph cards of basketball player Wes Unseld from the Washington Bullets.

My homie basketball team that changed their name to the Washington Wizards in 1997.

They are cards that are sort of cheap because the autograph is on a clear sticker and then placed on the card. The athlete, celebrity or whoever never even sees the final product with these "on sticker" cards produced by the thousands by the trading card companies. The signer is handed (or sent) a roll, or sheet of the blank stickers that are the size of a small band-aid to sign usually in black or blue sharpie pen (magic marker type ink) I prefer the "on card" autograph cards but those are sometimes harder to find and depending on the product are often more expensive.

Well my mistake was not paying attention to WHERE the card was coming from. The auction plainly shows that the location of the item I was bidding on is in CHINA I think because the item location reads "China, UT, China" I just saw the UT part and thought "Oh its in Utah!" I got overexcited and was trigger happy.

Normally I pay very close attention to where something is located and ALWAYS try to avoid the problem countries in Asia, mostly because of the proliferation of counterfeit  products, especially collectibles coming out of those countries. Particularly China and Japan.

Fortunately the seller ships internationally and the card has now been marked as "shipped". Unfortunately the estimated delivery date ranges from 04 May to 09 June. Hopefully the card will arrive much sooner, but I tend to doubt it. I have had items come from Canada that took a month or more so getting a shipment literally from the slow boat from China in anything more than a month is wishful thinking.

Overall the cost isn't too much it was $1.99 (opening bid) for the card itself plus $4.99 shipping. The other card's opening bid was also $1.99 opening bid and I won it for $4.90 just under my max bid of $5 bucks. That first card is in the US fortunately and its shipping is only $3.25.

Oh well mistakes happen and this time it gave me a subject I could make a semi-quick blog post about. As an after thought it reminds me some of the times when I have ordered a book on Ebay and not noticed, that the copy is marked as previously being a public library copy. With that though sometimes the sellers are not forthcoming in their listings, they just say it is a used copy. However, there are several book sellers that seem to specialize in reselling library copies. I try to stay away from those because of all the markings and stickers left on the books.

The Politics of Sports.

Who says that politics and sports don't mix?

In recent years first professional wrestler Jesse "The Body" Ventura was elected the Governor of Minnesota.

He also appeared in a small Hollywood action movie you might have seen with the Governor of California called "Predator". His acting wasn't bad, wasn't great, but wasn't bad. He also appears to have been a pretty good Governor.

Now a professional basketball player has been elected as Mayor. Former Detroit Piston (and Washington Bullet) Dave Bing was elected Mayor of Detroit.

So now the mayor's office will have to have a regulation backboard for the Mayor's One-On-One games with the President.

EDIT:
A link or two: bingformayor.com, espn.com news