"I was expecting the last-minute bidding to go crazy, but luckily for me it didn't," he said. "I thought the winning bid would be around $22,000. My max would have been $20,000.Amazingly, somehow this guy sets a record for modern-day card spending and he still walks away with a $4,000 consumer surplus. We should all be so lucky.
As for his motivations:
"I focused on this card because I believe Stephen Strasburg is truly the LeBron James of baseball"
--snip--
"I think there has been a lot of negativity recently in sports, so someone like Strasburg coming along is just what sports needs"
I recommend reading the whole article and forming your own opinions. As for me, I like the guy's conviction and commitment to all that is right and good in the world.
But that doesn't mean he's not an idiot for spending $16,000 on a card.
My sense is that baseball is incapable of having a Lebron-esque star, simply because one player cannot have that level of impact in a game (or for a team). Especially if that player only plays in 1/5 of the team's games. Also, is there that much of a sportsmanship and ethics issue in baseball that Strasburg is the answer? Are baseball players so unlikeable that we are all secretly clamoring for a flamethrowing messiah to rescue us from our ethical wasteland? Last time I checked, there are a bunch of wholesome, or at least unassuming, stars out there in the likes of Albert Pujols, Joe Mauer, Evan Longoria etc. I guess you can add Strasburg to the list if you'd like.
I don't mean to just out and out hate on this guy, so I'll stop there. He doesn't seem like a jerk or some profit whore or what have you. If this card makes him happy, then he's a winner in my book. Well, that and the fact that his wife didn't leave him for this.
