Okay, remember what I said about patience in my last post? Well, forget it. I am now the proud owner of a sealed 1989 Upper Deck factory set.

A few months ago, Thorzul had a series of posts about this great haul of cards he bought online for a stupid-low price. The gist of it was that if you find a seller on eBay who doesn't know what they have, then you can make it work for you. In this case, I dutifully typed in "1989 Upper Deck set" just like many times before, once again to find the usual assortment of crumb-bums ranging in price from $50 up to $150. They have THE GRIFFEY CARD in the set, you know.

Well, practicing the patience that I preach, I opted not to go for any of these deals, tantalising though they may be. Instead, I decided to look at the listings for "1989 Upper Deck box". I know that sets contain one of all the cards in a particular issue, while boxes are just full of unopened packs of cards with no guarantee of the contents therein. But just because I knew the difference, and you know the difference, doesn't mean everybody knows the difference.

Of course, there were a bunch of listings for hobby boxes, most sealed, some unsealed, all at inflated prices. But there was a listing buried pretty much smack in the middle, that expired in two days. It was for a sealed factory set. The description said a factory set. The pictures seemed to confirm it was a factory set. Yet the seller had listed the product under the "box" category. What's more, the starting bid was $25 and there were no bidders.

This was exactly what I was hoping for! The speculators and horders interested in purchasing boxes because they might get multiple Griffeys had no interest in a factory set with merely one Griffey. And the people chasing sets wouldn't think to look in the "box" category, so nobody was bidding on it. I saved the listing in my watch list. Now all I needed was for two simple things to happen:

a) Nobody else found the listing, or put a bid on it
b) I remembered to bid on it myself (don't laugh, it's happened before)

I should mention that all this happened the day before I wrote my last post, so I knew that getting this set was a distinct possibility at the time I wrote this post. Sorry for the slight deception. But at the same time, if the listing had be found by other people, and the bidding rocketed, I would have just bowed out and wait for the next opportunity. Thankfully, that never happened. Both (a) and (b) occurred, and I won the auction at the minimum bid. Now I just need to get the thing over to Australia.

Looks like I'm going to need some more patience.