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So just how did Oreville become the “Eliasberg of Sample Slabs”??
Wingsrule
Posts: 2,983 ✭✭✭✭
Twelve years ago tomorrow (leap year of all things), Oreville posts a Regency slab he had just acquired and foolishly asked him if it was for sale. As you can imagine, even at double the price, it wasn’t going anywhere.
By this point in time, I had been collecting samples for 6-8 months and probably had 50 or so in my collection, many in part to our old friend Cameron. I used to send him a check every once in awhile and he would respond by sending a handful of samples my way.
Fast forward a month, and here comes an NGC MS-63 Morgan on ebay. It was on my watch list, and every time I looked it seemed the price had jumped by $10. Looking at the bidders, which you could still do at that time, showed that one individual kept entering incremental bids trying to discover the leading bidder’s max. Thinking I recognized the bidder, I inquired again via PM here on the boards. Yep, same person. He went on to tell me that there were no known 63s as all the other ones were in 60 holders.
From there were the occasional “I found this one” and “are you interested in this dupe I have” PMs and several successful transactions followed.
Somewhere in this timeline, some ebayer with the handle of “midnitesurfer” appears. I instantly begin disliking him as he outbids me on many of the samples I need. I get a few, but not enough. As time unfolds, we begin communicating, and shortly thereafter, he decides to bail on the wonderful world of sample slabs.
Victory! A few emails later, a check is leaving my hands to be exchanged for boxes of samples. Many of them seen previously only on the sampleslabs.com website: a PCGS Franklin come to mind, not to mention the unique PCGS Morgan mule that has become famous over the past few weeks.
Late 2009 appears, my daughter has just started college, and things at work are not going well. Our largest customer, representing about 70% of our business, has just come out of bankruptcy protection and things aren’t looking good. I make the decision to start my own consulting company. Always had it in the back of my mind, and opportunity was knocking on the door.
I only had one rule going into this adventure: I would assume that I would have absolutely zero income for the first six months and needed to have that much set aside in case things didn’t work out. This was over and above the regular emergency fund.
The samples had to go. But how? Part them out on ebay? Nah, that would take too long. Offer them up to the folks on the boards? Seemed reasonable, but a lot of them had the same basic ones I did and were only focusing on the rarer versions.
Hey, wait a minute! What about Oreville? He is one of those sample freaks. Hmmm, let me send him a message.
Over the course of the next few months, several PMs cross the network. I want a million dollars, and Oreville is offering 12 bucks. Back and forth we go and eventually settle on terms. The next few weeks find boxes and boxes of slabs heading east, along with the occasional complaint that he doesn’t have room to store them all. That is his problem now!
We still converse via PMs often, and I still pick up a few samples at shows and on the boards. It’s one of the few saved searches I have on my ebay account, even after all these years.
The torch was passed a long time ago and it is good to see all of the attention samples are getting nowadays. Who woulda thunk about a special display at a major show revolving around sample slabs? Looking back, you had conder101’s slab book (I still have my signed copy), Cameron’s ground-breaking website sampleslabs.com (with hats off to Jeremy for preserving that knowledge), to David Schwager’s recent sample slab publication (bought one of those copies, too!).
I think back on the doily sample I sent to Oreville as final settlement on the sample deal, only to find out days later that it was (at the time) unique! Doh! And then the Morgan mule, and getting back in touch with midnitesurfer (aka Exojunkie).
What will the next chapter of this story hold?
And as I go to post this, I see Lakesammman has posted a thread on various Collectors Club and Luncheon slabs. Need to go through my photos to see which ones he missed!
By this point in time, I had been collecting samples for 6-8 months and probably had 50 or so in my collection, many in part to our old friend Cameron. I used to send him a check every once in awhile and he would respond by sending a handful of samples my way.
Fast forward a month, and here comes an NGC MS-63 Morgan on ebay. It was on my watch list, and every time I looked it seemed the price had jumped by $10. Looking at the bidders, which you could still do at that time, showed that one individual kept entering incremental bids trying to discover the leading bidder’s max. Thinking I recognized the bidder, I inquired again via PM here on the boards. Yep, same person. He went on to tell me that there were no known 63s as all the other ones were in 60 holders.
From there were the occasional “I found this one” and “are you interested in this dupe I have” PMs and several successful transactions followed.
Somewhere in this timeline, some ebayer with the handle of “midnitesurfer” appears. I instantly begin disliking him as he outbids me on many of the samples I need. I get a few, but not enough. As time unfolds, we begin communicating, and shortly thereafter, he decides to bail on the wonderful world of sample slabs.
Victory! A few emails later, a check is leaving my hands to be exchanged for boxes of samples. Many of them seen previously only on the sampleslabs.com website: a PCGS Franklin come to mind, not to mention the unique PCGS Morgan mule that has become famous over the past few weeks.
Late 2009 appears, my daughter has just started college, and things at work are not going well. Our largest customer, representing about 70% of our business, has just come out of bankruptcy protection and things aren’t looking good. I make the decision to start my own consulting company. Always had it in the back of my mind, and opportunity was knocking on the door.
I only had one rule going into this adventure: I would assume that I would have absolutely zero income for the first six months and needed to have that much set aside in case things didn’t work out. This was over and above the regular emergency fund.
The samples had to go. But how? Part them out on ebay? Nah, that would take too long. Offer them up to the folks on the boards? Seemed reasonable, but a lot of them had the same basic ones I did and were only focusing on the rarer versions.
Hey, wait a minute! What about Oreville? He is one of those sample freaks. Hmmm, let me send him a message.
Over the course of the next few months, several PMs cross the network. I want a million dollars, and Oreville is offering 12 bucks. Back and forth we go and eventually settle on terms. The next few weeks find boxes and boxes of slabs heading east, along with the occasional complaint that he doesn’t have room to store them all. That is his problem now!
We still converse via PMs often, and I still pick up a few samples at shows and on the boards. It’s one of the few saved searches I have on my ebay account, even after all these years.
The torch was passed a long time ago and it is good to see all of the attention samples are getting nowadays. Who woulda thunk about a special display at a major show revolving around sample slabs? Looking back, you had conder101’s slab book (I still have my signed copy), Cameron’s ground-breaking website sampleslabs.com (with hats off to Jeremy for preserving that knowledge), to David Schwager’s recent sample slab publication (bought one of those copies, too!).
I think back on the doily sample I sent to Oreville as final settlement on the sample deal, only to find out days later that it was (at the time) unique! Doh! And then the Morgan mule, and getting back in touch with midnitesurfer (aka Exojunkie).
What will the next chapter of this story hold?
And as I go to post this, I see Lakesammman has posted a thread on various Collectors Club and Luncheon slabs. Need to go through my photos to see which ones he missed!
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Comments
This has been fun to watch over the years.
I'd wager there's lots of clad in samples but none older than about 1997.
I didn't really believe it though.
Poor SOB just started to look at the shared folder of new discoveries from my collection... at last count about 50 that he didn't know about :-) and I still have more to sort through. Plus several others have been feeding him THEIR discoveries. And he still has a day job...
ANA 50 year/Life Member (now "Emeritus")
If you collect samples, it's more like Homer and less like Bob.
I'd claim Bart, but I'm probably (being honest) more Newman.
ANA 50 year/Life Member (now "Emeritus")
Thanks for posting, Wingsrule!
ANA LM
USAF Retired — 34 years of active military service! 🇺🇸
Glad I started, only been since 6/2007 that I have been collecting samples.
I was fortune enough to at least buy a few samples from Cameron K.
I have giving David S. some pictures and helped him with some of the descriptions of the samples.
Thought I would add a picture for this thread.
*
I never considered myself as the Eliasberg or Simpson of Sample Slabs.
I could never be considered the Eliasberg or Simpson of anything else because I could never afford anything else so massive?????