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Among all the post-Belmont coverage of American Pharoah’s run all the way into the history books as the first thoroughbred since Affirmed in 1978 to win horse racing’s coveted Triple Crown, one article amused me.
Unlike another piece I found elsewhere about the projections on the eventual stud fee when it’s time for A.P. to engage in some frisky business beginning in 2016, projections that are rapidly approaching a quarter of a million dollars per, this piece was on what, under normal circumstances, would be quite remarkable.
According to USA Today sportswriter Zolan Kanno-Youngs, the number of uncashed $2 winning tickets was more than 90,000 out of the 94,128 $2 paper tickets sold in the run-up to the race, which means almost 96 percent of those tickets sold weren’t cashed by those who felt a collectible was worth a whole lot more than a $3.50 payout.
Now, as Kanno-Youngs pointed out, there will certainly be those who have their sights set on eBay or Craigslist somewhere down the road in pursuit of what all profiteering collectors desperately want to collect most, someone who’ll buy what they have. After all, long before reality TV made rock stars out of Rick and the rest on the History Channel’s “Pawn Stars,” everyone knew the real reality, which is what you have isn’t worth a cent until you find a buyer.
As far as what I have collectibles-wise, like a lot of guys who grew up in the 1960s and are now in their 60s, I have a lot of sports-related “treasures,” and I use quotation marks because my treasures, no doubt, would be considered another person’s clutter. But the cards, the autographs, the ticket stubs for games played so long ago that many who performed for me are now walking out of an Iowa cornfield ready to play on Shoeless Joe’s Field of Dreams and the scrapbooks and such also serve a utilitarian purpose since I often use them as graphics for sports pieces I write each month for “Our Generation’s Magazine.”
I suppose some would view my clothes, especially the 150-plus T-shirts (minus the boring white ones with no writing on them, which are undershirts), as collectibles, but I choose to see my wardrobe as retro.
While I know someone may have an interest in buying some of what I’ve accumulated, I never really seem interested in doing the necessary research to determine if what I have is worth something to someone I may never find.
And, because the worth is only determined by whatever someone is willing to pay me for it, I’m always wary about selling anything for fear I’ll get hosed and the buyer will have given me pennies on the dollar before selling my former treasure for dollars on my pennies.
But there is that yearning, I believe, to hold tightly to the past, especially those pleasant moments, which compels so many of us to collect. For me, that urge can be seen in a large basket of coasters I’ve collected from watering holes I’ve visited in my travels. As I write this, I’ve just taken a slug of OJ and put the glass down on a coaster I brought back just this past spring from Munich that advertises a beer, “Paulaner Salvator Doppelbock.” While all these cardboard circles and squares (except for that nifty triangular coaster that promotes Labatt Ice) are essentially worthless, somehow, they matter to me.
The yearning to hold on to that which would matter little to others certainly can prompt idiosyncratic behavior. A case in point was last weekend when I thought I’d make a list of tasks I needed to do on Saturday and finally used one of the 13 pages in a notepad I purloined from a hotel room, one with a view of one of Scotland’s treasures, the estuary of the River Forth called the Firth of Forth. The top of the pad says, “Royal Terrace Hotel in Edinburgh.”
What was so important I used a precious piece of paper rather than another piece from the reams you’d probably expect in a writer’s house? Here it is: “1.Wash sheets and towels 2. Meijer- broccoli, milk, beer 3. Mow 4. Write column on collectibles.” As soon as I looked at that accounting of banalities, I regretted using the pad.
And so it goes with our penchant for pressing flowers in books and making scrapbooks and keeping uncashed tickets from horse races. While some may indeed wind up on eBay, I’m guessing more will never clear the front door of 90-some thousand houses, houses inhabited by those who know a real treasure when they see one.
