Wednesday's Words of Wisdom

           Good morning and happy Wednesday. My Words of Wisdom for this week are up to date and right on the money. It all came to me this weekend after the Yankees game where one of their players entered some club about hits. We both know what I'm talking about, I just hate the Yankees. Anyway, my Words of Wisdom are to the fan that caught the home-run, and to anyone else who might get put in a similar situation. Do not try to do the right thing when it comes to professional athletes and memorabilia.

           Let's say you caught a historic home-run ball at a baseball game. What would you do? Would you take it home and wait for the offers to pour in? That's what I would do. These players make stupid amounts of money and will pay top dollar for shit like that. Even if the player doesn't want to pay for it, there are thousands of collectors out there with too much money that are more than willing to shell out some serious dough for this kind of stuff. The smart thing to do here is take the ball home and start getting your bills together. Do some research and find out your price floor, meaning the price you won't go lower than. I would hope you don't have a price ceiling, you can accept as much as anyone is willing to pay. The point is, you need to take the smart road here and get as much money as possible.

            Words of Wisdom, look out for number one and get that money. Opportunities like this don't come around that often, if at all. You need to be completely selfish here and get as much money out of the deal as possible. Don't try to be the ultimate fan and give the ball back. Trust me, you'll do much better off in the open market selling to the highest bidder.
 
           The fan that caught the Yankee ball decided to be the "good guy" and give the ball back. He was rewarded with free tickets for the rest of the season, signed bats and whatnot. Not a bad deal I suppose. Oh I forgot to mention that the ball he caught would have been worth at least $250,000. Yes, $250,000. I'll let you imagine what he could have bought with all that money.

            That's not the only thing. He might end up paying around $14,000 in taxes if the IRS decides to consider the stuff he received as income. These are all estimates of course. The tickets are valued between 45 and 74 thousand dollars alone. So this guy doing the right thing could end up costing him over 10 thousand dollars. So again, my Words of Wisdom are DO NOT do the right thing when it comes to professional athletes and sports memorabilia.

            What would you have done in this situation? If the answer is anything other than "get that money, get that money, get that money!" You don't listen and should really look into that. In the meantime I'm going to do the right thing and feed a poor homeless man a Ham Sandwich. If you're asking, "what else are you going to do?" My answer is always "get that Hand-job!" So don't you worry!