Of Teletrade and Joe Klecko
April 2nd, 2009 | Published in My Collection
In the dark days before eBay, there was a telephone auction called Teletrade. You could send your cards to Teletrade, they would grade the cards and sell them in their automated phone auction, and they would send you a check for the proceeds. Teletrade is still in business, but their auctions now appear to be limited to coins and currency.
I bought a lot of cards through Teletrade, including some I should have passed on. I found these yesterday in a box of junk cards: ten 1978 Topps Joe Klecko rookie cards, still with the Teletrade seal on them. What was I thinking, that Joe would be a hall-of-famer some day? That I could find his mom and she would pay big bucks for them? Or did I hit the wrong key on my phone, meaning to bid on a John Unitas rookie card instead? Most likely I just wanted to bid on something, and there wasn’t anything I was interested in buying that week.
So what are they worth now? There are loads of them on eBay at around a dollar each. But those, of course, don’t have the genuine Teletrade seal.
Mine are up for auction, too. Click here if you love Joe Klecko!
