What’s the most expensive mistake you’ve ever made? by Illinoisblue 20 Jul 2022 11:49
I can hardly believe this but my sister-in-law may just have lost tens of thousands of dollars. Quite likely more. Allow me to explain….

Her son, my nephew (age 10) has a ton of baseball and basketball trading cards. Most of them he’s bought or received as birthday presents. No real value. However he has a couple binders full of cards from the early to mid 80s that were passed down to him from an uncle (not me). So he’s recently been sorting through those binders and came across a 1986 Michael Jordan rookie card. Produced by a company called Fleer.

Nephew twigged this might have some value, told my sister-in-law he wanted to sell it. He claimed to have seen it online for $1000. He’s all excited. My sister-in-law does not do any research of her own, takes nephew and card to a collectibles store where the owner quizzes her on where the card is from, how long she’s had it etc. And then (Red flag warning) says the words “this could be worth a lot of money”. Yes, a man who’s job it is to deal and trade such collectibles is telling you your card is very valuable. The next words out of his mouth were “I’ll give you $400 for it” which my nephew hears and is all excited about. They sell a Michael Jordan 1986 card in excellent condition for $400.

At this point, if this post was a Tik Tok this is when that voiceover would be playing “it was at this moment they knew they had fked up”.

A very quick search would reveal the same card selling for $96,000
https://www.nbcsports.com/chicago/bulls/michael-jordans-1986-87-fleer-rookie-card-sells-record-breaking-96k

And one that sold at auction for over $1milion
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10038698-michael-jordans-fleer-bulls-rookie-card-sells-for-record-1m-at-auction

Best case scenario they’ve lost thousands. Worst case, hundreds of thousands. My sister in law has left the family group chat although my wife did speak to her briefly last night and she is distraught and in no mood to talk about it. The crazy thing is, another family member had last week told her about the process of grading trading cards and how you can pay $50 to get cards assessed to get an idea of value. This Jordan card even in bad condition is a $5k card.

Lesson of the story: do your damn research!