Scrivener.net

Remembrance of collectibles lost.

When you were a kid, did you ever own something like a baseball signed by major league ballplayers that would be worth a small fortune today if you hadn't been such a dumb-butt as to go play ball with it and lose it?

Feel better, the major leaguers who signed it did the same dumb thing. Whitey Ford remembers...

I had met President Kennedy's father ... We were playing up in Palm Beach against the Braves; I was in the locker room about the seventh inning and a Secret Service guy comes in and says, 'Who are you?' and flashes a badge.

I said, 'Whitey Ford.' He said, 'You're just the guy I'm looking for.' Joe Kennedy wanted Mickey, Yogi, Tony Kubek and I to come visit him in his house. We met him, shook hands...

I brought a dozen baseballs for him to get the president to sign. Sure enough, a month later, I get 12 baseballs signed by JFK - three for Tony, three for Mickey, three for Yogi and three for me.

About 20 years later, I see a full-page ad in Sports Collectibles Digest -- JFK baseball, $35,000. I couldn't wait to call Yogi and Tony and Mickey.

Not one of them had any baseballs left. The kids had played with them.

My wife found one of them out in the attic. I still have it. The other 11 disappeared. (NY Post)

A couple years ago in the basement of my parents' house I found a beautiful, circa 1966, boxed Star Trek bridge set including the captain's chair, control consoles, and action figures (or whatever they called them then) of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty and the rest, all in the original packaging, unopened, proof condition. Neither my parents nor I had any idea how it got there. Maybe they bought it for me but never gave it to me and forgot about it for 35 years.

I had no idea what it was worth and didn't look it up. I just brought it home and put it in the back of my closet intending to let it sit there for another 20 years.

I still don't want to know what it was worth. I came home one day and my three-year-old had gotten into it. Aiiieeee....!