Or I have been "Wallaced" once again.

Sometimes my collection is filled not with what I have, but with what I lost.

I am a collector. The Star Wars Pepsi cans I had to cut at the bottom to allow the soda to be released without breaking the seal lay in a box some where in storage. The Star Wars action figures are in multiple boxes in multiple closets behind multiple book cases. Should I mention the hardcover novels I like to read, the pops craze that took over my shot glass space, or my digital library that I fear I will lose (or had already lost due to a computer crash)?

Lately I have been selling off pieces of my CGC collection. The items I bought with the increase of cash from this purge of books have been for healthcare payments, car payments, even a plane ticket back home for my wife for a funeral. I've been lucky though, since I found a buyer and out of the abundance I sold I only got rid of one book that was a Grail. The others I was happy to see go to a good home. Each time I sold five or six books, I thought I could use that money to buy one book. I didn't. Instead, another payment was paid, rent, utilities, and insurance again. Yes, healthcare is damn expensive. Did I mention I'm at the doctor's office right now?

I was watching a few books in the most recent Pedigree auction. One in particular was a beautiful copy of a CGC 9.8 of a birthday book I struggled to find in near mint condition (the struggle continues). Sure, the pages weren't deemed white, but a 9.8 as old as me (Technically older, since most of my birthday books were released in February of 1972) is amazing. I placed an opening bid that I knew would never win. In hours I was notified to try again.

I didn't. I hoped to come in and win in the final seconds. I watched and waited. I calculated what I WOULD spend against what I COULD spend. They were vastly different dollar amounts. Suffice it to say in the weaning hours, I was out. It's not that I wouldn't have gone higher, because I would have. It's just that I couldn't. I had something similar happen with a Sub-Mariner #38 which I eventually purchased, although not the same I might add as what I clearly craved.

The bidding closed, my data base was not updated and I lost without really playing at all. I hope to find one in the wild, maybe during a game of ComicBookGo, maybe I'll find it in a distant land rummaging through a box here or there. Maybe it will be there waiting for me? Or maybe, just MAYBE, it will sit forever, lost among my collection of never-haves and never-should-be's.

Ps: To whomever purchased the item pictured, Bravo.

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