Like many people in Leelanau County, I love to buy things on E-Bay.

Since I’ve been collecting sports memorabilia my entire life, that’s what I’m always in the market for.

Years ago, before E-Bay, I used to do the show circuit. I’ve been to national sports collecting conventions in Texas, Georgia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and closer to home in Detroit and Chicago.

As a junior in high school in 1971, I set up at one of the very earliest sports cards shows in Troy, Mich. By the time Chicago hosted a national convention in 1988, I was one of the hobby “oldtimers,” and I was writing a monthly collecting column for Baseball Hobby News out of San Diego. So I was asked to host a seminar at the Chicago national called “Collecting In The Good Old Days.” I did feel like a hobby oldtimer, even though I was only 34.

But then the costs of doing shows started getting steep. Between paying for gas, food and hotels – even though there were always three or four of us on a trip – the money that should have gone into adding to our collections was getting us nowhere.
So we stopped doing shows and started doing E-Bay.

For the most part, buying things on E-Bay is pretty simple, providing you pay attention. But you always have to be careful for a few unscrupulous people.

A few months ago I was working on one of the hobby’s toughest baseball card sets – the 1953 Glendale Meats Detroit Tigers. Glendales were hotdogs produced in the Detroit area and they produced Tigers cards in just that one year. But 1953 happened to be the year I was born and I wanted a good set to collect, so I went to work on a set.

They aren’t cheap, so you have to shop around to find one for under $100. Most of them fall in the $200-$400 range. With two kids in college, spending that kind of money on cards didn’t seem like the prudent thing to do. So I traded with longtime collecting friends for most of the cards and bought the rarer Glendale cards on E-Bay when I could.

One of the tougher Glendale cards to find is of a Tigers pitcher named Paul Foytack.

He was with the team for a decade and is pretty well known by Baby Boomers who followed the Tigers in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

So when I found a Foytack card on E-Bay, I got in on the bidding. I won the bid for $248, which I considered a bargain. I got a money order from the post office the next day and mailed my money.

A week went by. I didn’t hear anything from the seller. When I contacted him via e-mail, he shot me back a terse note saying he hadn’t received the money. I told him when I had sent it. Another four days went by and I sent another e-mail. He said he not only hadn’t received the money, but he was going to put the card back on E-Bay and leave negative feedback about me on E-Bay.

That sent me to the post office to have my money order traced. It took over a week, but when I found out what happened, I wasn’t happy. The money order had not only made it to the seller's house three days after I mailed it, it had been deposited in his bank account.

I made a copy of the cashed-in money order and sent it to the seller.

He sent back a weak reply, saying his wife had gotten the mail and deposited the money order into their account without his knowledge. He wanted to know if I wanted the Paul Foytack card or my money refunded. Normally, I would have taken the refund. But I needed the Foytack. So I had him send it along. I haven’t done business with him since, of course.

But it was a good lesson in being able to track the money and cards you send in the mail. Most of the people who buy and sell on E-Bay can be trusted. That’s why E-Bay sellers have individual ratings, so you can see what kind of feedback they’ve gotten.

Still, being careful is paramount.

Even though the Foytack card buying experience wasn’t a pleasant one, the hunt continues to complete the 1953 Glendale Meats set. I’m down to a few obscure players like Russ Sullivan, Joe Ginsberg and the elusive (and expensive) Art Houtemann.

But I’ll keep scouring E-Bay and trading e-mails from longtime collecting friends until the set is completed.

After that?

Like any true collector, I’ll find a new set and a new challenge to work on.