Phil

Right before we moved to the Huntsville area in 1986, I sold some of my baseball cards to Phil, a dealer I’d met at a local flea market two years earlier. I carried my binder into his shop, he lowballed me, and I took it. I got probably 15% of what I could have gotten for them had I just been patient and sold them to collectors individually. It was likely a $400 error–all the money in the world to a 15-year-old.

I felt a vague resentment about it for a while, of the sort that any bad deal would generate, but I never wished Phil any ill will for it. He was a businessman looking out for himself, which is what businessmen do. I was the right age for a lesson or two the hard way. It wasn’t like he had a pistol in my face.

A few months ago I Googled Phil. I was curious about how well and to what degree he’d made the jump to the online world, and if I found him I thought I might say hello. I was saddened to discover that he died more than nine years ago. He was 52 years old.

I was additionally saddened to read that his mother had survived him. I never met “Gert,” as he called her, but he spoke frequently and fondly of her. He described a woman who spat a lot of venom up front, but was endlessly loving and tender behind her facade. And she buried her baby boy. I don’t think this life can deal a greater horror.

I’d make 20 more bad deals with Phil if it would bring him back for her.

Thanks to collectsports.com for the image.

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