We're in a drought

I need Fuji to come to my neighborhood and make it rain.

The latest question in the grand Fuji contest, which I'm loving by the way, is what is the most money you've spent on one single sports item?

That's a legitimate question and I spent a considerable amount of time trying to remember purchases from my collecting past.   Aside from an annual box of Allen & Ginter for Gint-A-Cuffs, I don't spend that much in a single transaction these days.  I don't think I've ever spent more than about $20 for a single card and that was a 1966 Sandy Koufax which I posted here.

When I got out of the Navy back in 1994, I had saved several thousand dollars.  I went to a bunch of ballgames at the new Ballpark in Arlington.  I also bought stuff I wouldn't normally buy.  I bought an autographed Mickey Mantle 8X10 for somewhere north of $100.  I bought a Wayne Gretzky autographed picture and plaque for almost $100.  I even bought an autographed Will Clark Big Stick bat for $125.

Two thirds of those things are gone, casualties of trying to payoff the debt I incurred during my cardboard insanity of 1998-2003.  The most expensive sports thing I ever bought came during that period of insanity.  I walked into my local card shop and they had new boxes of 1999 SP Signature Edition baseball.  It was an autograph in every pack!  I whipped out the credit card and bought two boxes.  I don't remember the total cost, but it was somewhere around $500 for two boxes.

I'll just say that I walked away from that purchase sick to my stomach.  I still have a lot of those autographed cards and I posted about them for a contest I held back in August of 2010.

I have a feeling if I tried to spend that kind of money again, my wife would be a lot less forgiving this time around.