Would you pay $10K for a bunch of bugs?
By Andrew Tolentino | BSCM Editor
Maybe if you were a zany zoologist, an impassioned entomologist to be exact, or maybe if you just had this kind of cash stored away for a rainy day, you might just consider picking up a $10,000 set of 30 dead insects … maybe.
Following a tweet (no birds and bees pun intended) from a little birdie this morning, I wound up at a buy-it-now bug sale featuring a swarm from Upper Deck‘s 2011 Goodwin Champions Entomology. Get your magnifiers ready.
This may or may not happen. However, there is hope that one collector (of bugs, cards, extravagantly-priced eccentricities, or all of these) can buy the extensive insect library for the price of a healthy automotive down-payment.
As seen in the listing, this set features a breadth of bugs, ranging from Frog-legged Beetles and Blue-striped Weevils to Peanut head lanternflies and Giant African Emperor scorpions. Without a doubt, Upper Deck went to great lengths to acquire these oddly collectable creatures, and the seller surely spent some time cracking cases, but is there anyone out there willing to drop this kind of coin?
Maybe. Who knows? Maybe Eddie Vedder will step up to the plate and make an offer.
Whether it actually sells or not, this particular eBay listing will be one to watch in the coming days.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrzHH_fu0Lc[/youtube]
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Well, it IS an Or best offer auction, so maybe it will sell.
Most of the cards are available for under $100 now. The most expensive
recent sale was $350. If someone got it cheap enough to break up they
might do OK. As a single piece they are kind of cool, as a collection, well,
not so much.
The other problem is, is that if you are really interested in getting the bugs you
can just look on Ebay and get most of them for $20-$30. The “value” comes
from it being on a card.
Is it within Ebay policy to refuse Paypal as a payment option now days ?
If I had $10,000 to spend on cards – these bug cards wouldn’t get close to my collection. Here is what I would buy instead:
1951 Bowman Willie Mays RC $2500
1954 Topps Hank Aaron RC $1800
1954 Topps Al Kaline RC $700
1955 Topps Roberto Clemente RC $2200
1955 Topps Harmon Killebrew $250
1955 Topps Sandy Koufax RC $1200
1957 Topps Frank Robinson RC $300
1957 Topps Brooks Robinson RC $400
1958 Topps Roger Maris RC $500
With a little left over for some junk wax to have some fun opening…. I mean seriously – bugs!!!
How many times is beckett going to run this tuff to hype UD stuff? This is the last good thing
UD has done and it was over half a year ago. The real news is when UD will actually start shipping out these redemptions and some of the presidential sketches that are still owed.
For all practical purposes, you MUST accept Paypal if you sell on EBay.
You must offer “electronic forms of payment” for pretty much everything except local
pickup. They have a few no-name options, but it would not surprise me if they owned those too.
You CAN restrict payment to a merchant account, meaning you have your own credit card
processor. I’m guessing the big chains told ebay to stick it when told they had to use paypal.
Or it violated terms with Visa or it helped them avoid getting sued for anti-trust for illegal
bundling of services
In short, if you are a normal person, you are stuck and if you are a business, ebay tries to scare the buyers into only buying with paypal, so you lose bids and likely get a lower price.
Great Pearl Jam reference. Bugs is such a greay yet weird as hell song.
I vote for becoming their friend by the way.
I do really think that these cards are very interesting, but I would have a hard time with paying any more than on average of 100 dollars a card.w