Originally Posted by
Oil Can Dan
Please excuse the rant, but I can relate, somewhat, to this experience. Back when I was 17 years old some people broke into my house one night and stole (amoung other things) a boatload of my baseball cards. They stole a 1960 Topps set (not quite complete) and a 1963 Fleer set, along with 9-card sleeves containing cards of all the "stars", like Mike Schmidt, Pete Rose, Yaz, etc. They eventually caught the kids and they admitted to stealing then selling my cards to "The House of Cards", in Maryland, for $50. Turns out one of the two kids brought the cards into the store and claimed the cards belonged to his grandfather, who had died, so he wanted to sell them. This was in 1988 and there were cards in those 9-card sleeves there were brand freakin new, so there's no way that story held any water and the card shop knew it, so they apparently declined to buy them at all, but when the kid pleaded with the guy the guy said "I'll give you $50 for them all", which the kid agreed to.
I went to the House of Cards in an attempt to get them back or to at least buy them back, hopefully at some discounted price, but they would have none of it. First they said they didn't buy them, then they changed their story to "we bought them, but we sold them as a whole lot", then to "we bought them, sold some of them, but we don't know what's yours and what's ours". The police contacted them after I met with them but unfortunately there were no laws that dictated that protected me (as there were with Pawn shops), so I was s**t out of luck.
So I can empathize a bit, even though I lost mass-produced baseball cards and Tim lost unique collectables that are far less easy to replace. I spent many years building those sets, though, so I can still feel his pain even though the circumstances are a little different.
BTW, I believe The House of Cards is still in business to this day. I would hope that given the opportunity to bring your business elsewhere, you would.
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