Can't Buy Me Love (Unless it's under $15)

The BBQ Pit
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So, I’m relaxing and reading my Sunday Chicago Tribune. I find an intriguing article and begin reading. Since you need to be registered to read it, I’ll quote bits and pieces.

Here’s the headline:

Wow, sounds like a great story. Familial love, glory days of baseball, the ravages of old age.

The story begins with Julie Sollinger describing how much she loves her grandfather. Her grandfather played baseball for the Chicago Cubs for a few years in the 1940’s, but played in only 17 games. And he’s Julie’s hero. He left baseball and started a insurance/pension company and “made millions”. The story, correctly I might add, describes a fantastic man, who is, sadly, suffering from Alzheimers, now.

The story goes on about how he loved the game, and his wonderful granddaughter. He had some baseball cards made on his own and gave them out for free, because the makers of the cards wouldn’t have made them for a small-time player like himself. In response to his kindness and generosity, a sports memorabilia firm put him on a baseball card that was done in 1976-1977.

In an odd stroke of luck, Julie’s hubby was surfing the internet and found a place auctioning off one of the cards of her grandfather.

At this point, I figured, what a story. A wonderful man, baseball, doting daughter. Warm fuzzies all over.

Of course, you need a villian. Enter “unnamed collector” who had put the card up for auction. Julie, who so much loved her ailing grandfather, thought the card would make a wonderful, loving gift for her grandfather, so she bid on it. And bid on it… However, (insert sad music here), she was outbid.

Wow, how horrible. A veritable Shakespearian tragedy.

Wait!!!

After the auction, she emails the buyer of the card with her story, weaving a tale of woe heretofore unknown, and asking him for the card. He replies that he is not interested in selling it. And with the determination of a lost puppy going cross country to find his home, she emails evil villian again, with an even more loving plea. She gets (GASP!) no response.

Julie says: “How could this person be so cruel? I mean this is probably just some stupid collector who wants this for a set.” and “Here’s the one thing my grandfather has never had of his own, and I can’t even get it for him.”

I can’t see you right now, gentle reader, but you are truly a hard-hearted bastard if you are not in tears over this story of love and loss. Nearly an entire page was devoted to this poor woman and her ruined dream.

I left out one fact, a fact that was made, surreptiously in the middle of the article.
The card was auctioned for $61 dollars.

::deep breath::

Listen you stupid, self-obsessed, publicity seeking, moronic, pitiful waste of human flesh. If you wanted the card so bad, YOU SHOULD HAVE BOUGHT THE FUCKING CARD!!!. It was $61 FUCKING DOLLARS. You bid $15. You have a computer and can bid on ebay, but you can’t spend more than $61 dollars on your dream gift for your poor grandfather? And when you refuse to open your wallet (and I couldn’t help but notice the nice rock in your wedding ring, you shithead), you parade yourself to the paper and paint the guy who bought the card as an asshole. You even said: “I’d want somebody to print this guy’s address and just have everyone send him email telling him what a jerk he is.”

Well, FUCK YOU. I’d spam your fucking email with every kind of piece of crap I could find, you vindictive, pennypinching, piece of crap. My God you must have the balls of a blue whale in heat to pull this kind of shit. If I didn’t truly feel bad for your grandfather, I’d hunt you down and jam 62 dollars worth of pennies in your hypocritical mouth and wait while you painfully shit them out.

And a healthy FUCK YOU too to the Trib for their melodramatic, manipulative piece of shit article.

Disgraceful.

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But how do you really feel?

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Have you written a slightly less ranting version of this to the editor of the newspaper? AND the lousy reporter?

Title it “Julie Sollinger - Cheapskate”

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**Originally posted by Hamlet:

Very nicely put. Thank you for throwing some vitriol their direction, too - they’re the ones that printed the story, with its manipulative (sorry to use the same word - I can’t think of a more appropriate one) slant. Of course, the woman in question sounds like a moron, too.

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And if you haven’t, will you, please? (But don’t omit the hilarious “shitting $62 in pennies” part out of the revised version.) And then let us know what happens next, pretty please?

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…but what if she bid but the card was bought by the time she came back to place a higher bid?

?

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Holy shit. I can’t believe the sense of entitlement some people have. She has decided that she wants it more, so she deserves it. Well cough up the cash honey, or shut up !

Hamlet if you need a hand with force-feeding the pennies, e-mail me :slight_smile:

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Good question. Hamlet wrote “Julie’s hubby was surfing the internet and found a place auctioning off one of the cards”. If that place didn’t have proxy bidding like eBay does, why didn’t that penny-pinching whiner just bid $500 or whatever at the outset (her gramps “made millions”, right?) instead of starting at $15 and somehow getting outbid at a paltry $61? I wonder at what point/price she stopped bidding and was there a time/deadline issue? Did she get distracted by a bright and shiny object during the auction or something?

Julie Sollinger wasn’t “thrown a curve”; she merely failed to extend her “odd stroke of luck” to include purchasing her grandfather’s rare 1977 baseball card at a bargain basement price. Tough break. Maybe another card will crop up for Julie in 2027 – now that would be a news story.

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Ms. Sollinger–how about a warm cup of STFU?

Yeah, she’s a simp but I would love to smack the editor that ran this story even more. Must have been a sloooooow news day, even for the usual glurge that makes the Sunday paper.

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Are there only one of these cards in existence anymore or something? Couldn’t she just find another one somewhere else?

This sounds like the customers at my store. “This is very important to me, I want to frame it in the best way possible, with UV and conversation protection.” “That will be $100.00.” “Oh, that’s too much, can we do it any cheaper? I was thinking it would be only about $30.00.” :smack:

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Nenya Elizabeth, the article is woefully short on the facts of the auction, leading me to my conclusion that, were it more favorable to Ms. Sollinger’s plight, it damn well woulda been in there. However, here is precisely what the article said:

So, it is possible that somehow she was juiced out of the bidding. I am a bit unfamilar with eBay (I couldn’t find the history of the bidding on this item anywhere on the site). However, as Cajo pointed out, it’s her own damn fault she doesn’t have the card in her possession right now. She had every opportunity to buy it, and didn’t. And then she started her simpering and thus sprouted her delusion that she should be entitled to whatever she wants, even though she was too cheap to buy it in the first place.

I also cleaned up the rant (it pained me to drop the part about her having balls of a blue whale in heat) and sent it to the Trib. Doubt anything comes of it, except I feel a bit better now.

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Hamlet there’s no reason she should have been “juiced out of the bidding.” eBay offers proxy bidding, meaning that each item has bid increments, say $1.00 or $0.50. You can put in the maximum amount you will pay for the item, but your current bid will only be one bid increment above the current high bidder. If she wasn’t such a cheapskate, she could have put in a proxy bid for, say, $75, and had the card for $62 or so. When she said “We put in some bids, like $15,” it sounds like she’s been put on the spot by the interviewer, and is trying to play off her cheapskateness.

Bleah. No pity for her.

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Knowing that eBay was the auction site in question makes Julie’s persecution complex even more perplexing. As an eBay shopper I can attest their bidding webpage offers links galore to help one successfully secure the items they want. If “the price kept going up and up” (and hello, auction!), she’d have been repeatedly exposed to proxy bidding on the “Sorry! You’ve been outbid!” webpage. The sinking feeling she got the first time she was outbid should have loosened her wallet.

Spilt milk, Julie. Dry your tears with the dollars you saved.