First Case of Buyer's Remorse and the Sunk Cost Fallacy

 For most of my time in this hobby I had largely been able to avoid what you'd call "buyer's remorse". Even when you consider how much time and money I'd spent on collections I immediately just moved on from and dismantled, I can't say I ever really regretted it since in the moment I really wanted those cards.

Like back when I'd go to minor league games a lot there were several impulse purchases for cards I could potentially get signed, and that potential was often realized so there was nothing to regret. The rest were usually random and rare like the time I bought a Don Mattingly photo variation SP or a vintage Don Newcombe Bowman card. Both of these were super cool and relatively cheap so these were perfectly okay.

The rest of the time I have these criteria set up before I hit the BIN button.

*Do I feel like this would immediately become a key part of my collection?
*If I wait 2 months to buy it, do I still feel like I want it?

Almost everything I've ever shown on here has cleared both. There probably were a few exceptions here and there but on the whole it's just a matter of how long a card fits being in my possession before I decide it's time to move it.

But fast forward to late-January and I got my first "I should've thought this through a little more" moment in a long time.

Now the card in question is pretty cool unless you're someone who doesn't like the San Francisco Giants or the New York Yankees. It's a dual autograph of future Hall of Famer Buster Posey and former blog namesake Francisco Cervelli. By all accounts this should be amazing, definitely something that would've been perfect in my collection even despite all of the shifts, downsizes and re-arrangements right? This card should take me all the way back to my fondest/earliest MLB memories of 2012, shouldn't it?

Well, unfortunately it didn't feel like it.

Even though this card was on my mental wantlist for a decade since I first discovered it, it didn't feel like I finally reeled in a card I'd long wanted. Instead it felt like, "mmm, now what?".

You see when I first discovered this card existed a decade ago I had a delusion of grandeur that it would pair well with another dual autograph card that I owned at the time. A Dellin Betances-Clayton Kershaw dual autograph. My dumb idea was that a pairing of those two dual autographs would be perfect. Both featured home-grown Yankees players I was a super big fan of, and both also featured two future HoF NL West superstars who were absolutely big deals in the 2010's.

One problem, I forgot I had sent out the Dellin-Kersh dual autograph to Nick made this purchase seem like a waste the moment I realized that idea wasn't going to happen. Especially since I was not going to spend even more money to buy another copy either.

Note to Nick: this does not mean I want the Dellin-Kersh back, keep it since it made you and your kids excited. If you try to send it back to me I will get very upset :(. This Posey-Cerv dual is already gone anyway.

To be clear moving on from that was okay with me, if it wasn't I wouldn't have sent it to Nick. And it would've gone to someone else anyway.

But yeah the brainfart ended up making this Cerv-Posey dual look meaningless as a result.

I tried to spin it for the positive since it's still an autograph of MVPosey (bonafide HoF lock) and Posey's autograph prices are in the somewhat reasonable spot now where he's been retired long enough that his prices went down but his HoF ballot debut is just far enough away that they haven't ticked back up yet. Still expensive, relatively, but that's what comes with dealing with a 3x World Series Champion, lifelong Giant, 2010 NL ROY, 2012 NL MVP and 7x All Star.

It's also yet another Cervelli autograph, even though I've pulled the plug on that collection eons ago. Cervelli is still cool.

But in the end lying to myself didn't work. This blogpost is proof of that.

Despite that buyer's remorse I kept my big boy pants on and paid for it. I didn't ask the seller to cancel or make up some shit to back out of it. If anything I more or less demanded it be sent to me immediately when the seller provided the tracking number but didn't bother actually physically sending it out for a week. Even if I were genuinely excited to get it in tow I would've still been annoyed at that.

I then scanned it and inserted it into another post which still hasn't gone up but ultimately decided to make this post instead when the lie I told to myself crumbled and the card being in that post didn't feel right anymore.

This is where the sunk cost fallacy/coping comes in. At the end of the day I paid what I paid and it's gone. It was technically a card I had thought about getting for a decade and finally got. In all likelihood I was gonna spend that money on something else that's dumb and would've been dumped onto someone. The only part that stings is that I just didn't think it'd be in record time.

I suppose I could've also recouped some of my losses by selling it but at the risk of spoiling another post I have in the works, dumping > selling. Way too many headaches involved when you're dealing with another person and money is factored into the equation. Cards with a value of tens of dollars are not worth having those kinds of headaches over.

And in this case The Lost Collector (or at least his HoF binder he's arranged for his son) is the beneficiary. I realize Nick being a Giants fan would've made him as a landing spot just as interesting, and he's the one with the Dellin-Kersh dual and could've fulfilled that by proxy, but the convenient thing about Posey autographs is that absolutely nobody would complain about getting one for free.

And ultimately, TLC sent me a certified Cervelli autograph in what was our first trade. I've since sent him back several certified Cerv's but I felt this being the ultimate Cerv autograph (though not really because of him) would've made it the ultimate full circle move too.

Or I don't know, maybe that's just a more stoic way of saying I just wanted this immediately out of the house and onto the guy I've been dumping my certified Yankees autographs onto and it's about time they got a good one as opposed to another bust from 2015.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care.