Post Change Pickup

If you've been reading my blog, you know that I've decided to change how I collect.  One collection that I have way too much of involved former players from my alma mater, West Virginia University.

My new line of thinking is that I just need one card per player.  However, it's a plan and likely won't pan out quite that way.  I read a blog post on The Greatest 21 Days a couple of weeks ago and it was about a player I didn't know of that played at WVU.  That got me thinking about who else might have played and had a card that I didn't know of.

I was looking for a list of all professional players that also played at WVU.  I finally found it, but first I found a list of former players that made the majors.  Checking out both COMC and eBay, I was pleasantly surprised to find that many of them had cards.

The name "Bucky Guth" stuck out to me because he was the one player that made his debut after 1960 that I didn't already have a card of.  A basic eBay search turned up nothing, but there was a team set that came up.  I clicked it and surprisingly, there was the name.

It was an auction for a minor league set that I knew nothing about from the early 1970s.  I had no idea what to expect it would go off at.  I checked by Beckett Vintage Almanac and couldn't find a listing for the set.  Then I checked the Beckett OPG and found the set, but there are no prices listed for it.  Adding to the...ummmmm...dilemma was that it is listed as Guth's only card and there were no sales listed in eBay history.  How long would it be until this became available again?

I watched" it and got the notification it was 15 minutes from completion while at work.  I went ahead and bid, figuring there was no way I'd win.  When I first saw the auction, there was already a bidder.  It turned out that the other bidder only bid the minimum.  I won it for just a dollar more than the minimum bid.

1973 Caruso Tacoma Twins #10 Bucky Guth

Guth got just three at-bats in the majors with no hits.  He was a 20th round draft pick and when you add it all together, there was a good chance he may not have had ANY cards.

He played in Tacoma with a name that Twins fans know well, Tom Kelly.  He is in the set and that was the reason I felt the team set might end up going for a price out of my comfort zone.  I'm glad that I was wrong.

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Happy collecting!