Close to a Perfect Moment

I used to buy stuff fairly regularly off of e-Bay. Usually the items that I won were either hardback novels or items for my Stallone collection. In the last year or so, it's been pretty rare for me to find ANY THING that I really want.

That changed last week when I saw a belt buckle that Sylvester Stallone had commissioned for folks who worked on his movie "Paradise Alley." It was pretty cool in that it featured the title of the movie, the lead characters and the year the movie took place on the front. The back had the quote, "Never perfect people, only perfect moments" and was signed "Sly." Yeah, the buckle would make a nice addition to the collection.

No one had bid on the buckle. I decided to watch the auction. Days went by with no bids. Winning the buckle for the opening bid of less than ten bucks was becoming a REAL possibility. The auction was set to close yesterday and I wasn't going to be able to be home. Only one thing to do... call in Beatty. Big J and I agreed that a bid of $20 would probably win it.

Big John was set to place a bid for me right as the auction was closing. At 4:59:45 another bidder dropped in with a bid of $23.98. Beatty knew that I wanted the buckle and so at 4:59:57 he popped in a bid of $25.67.

Yes! Yes! Yes!

We had the high bid...for 20 seconds, then with just 7 seconds left in the auction the first bidder came back with a bid of $26.67 to win.

Oh well... I still may be able to find some hardbacks...