My Game-Used Dilemma
By the late-90's, when game-used relic cards and autographs were starting to spread through the hobby of trading cards, I was more concerned with my social life than what was being inserted into baseball cards. I never pulled a "hit" until my return to the hobby in 2007, when a sawed-off piece of Kirby Puckett's bat popped out of a pack of baseball cards.
"Oh my God" I yelled to my wife. Can you imagine the possibilities? Surely this was used to hit one of Puckett's 207 career home runs. Maybe it was the bat used in one of his 16 World Series hits? "Today, I feel like the luckiest collector on the face of the Earth".
That all ended for me a few weeks later when out of a box of cards came another Kirby Pucket bat. "Surely, this is the only other one" I hoped out loud. The next day I did a search for Kirby Pucket "game-used" bats and found over 100 listings on eBay.
Did you ever wonder how many of these bats are actually "game-used"? What's to say the two big companies, Topps and Upper Deck, didn't buy a boatload of bats from some "Mom and Pop" card shop going out of business that said they were authentic. The card companies have enough lawyers on their team to make you believe anything.
One day I had a dream that I was Kirby Puckett's 1993 bat, well at least one of the two dozen baseball players are issued each year. That season, Puckett hit 22 home runs and 89 RBI but for some ungodly reason didn't use me once in a game. When I was delivered, along with my brothers, Puckett took a few swings with me during batting practice and deemed me "too heavy". What that means, I don't know. He then walked up to a kid wearing a Puckett jersey who was begging for baseballs. Instead, Puckett walked up to that annoying kid, I think his name was "Zack" and gave me away.
Along the way, I ended up in a hobby shop, sold as an authentic "game-used" baseball bat used by the legendary, World Series hero, and now deceased, Kirby Pucket. One day, when card sales hit rock bottom a man in an expensive suit bought me for dirt cheap, along with several other bats and baseballs. The next day some jerks in New York chopped us all to bits, mixed us up and I ended up on a baseball card of some guy named "Fernando Vina". I don't know how they could have made that mistake. Kirby is at least 2 feet taller.
And then I woke up. The next week I was contacted by a Kirby Puckett fan who wanted to make a trade. After a few emails exchanged, I decided to send him an "authentic, game-used" bat for nothing in return. I knew he'd appreciate it way more than I ever could.
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Michel | Oct 6, 2008 | Reply
"The card companies have enough lawyers on their team to make you believe anything".....Brilliant!!!