I had my first E-Bay experience last night. I've been in the search for some "vintage" Houston Astros shirts and jerseys recently. Understandably, it's been difficult to find old throwback jerseys for the Houston Astros, let's face it, Houston is no New York or Los Angeles. You can find oodles of New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers clothing, but not 4th largest market stuff. It wasn't as if I was actively searching for this stuff, and seeking out Oshmans and Champs Sports stores that sold this stuff, but if I found myself in a mall or in a clothing store, I'd keep my eyes peeled to the sporting section to see if maybe they had something that would suit my needs for "stuff I don't need."

Having not found anything, I remembered a few years back when I happened to be bored and in search of old Star Wars toys. I looked around the web through toy collectors, but prices were just a tad bit too high for my tastes. Probably, these overpriced trinkets of yester year were owned by the same Star Wars geeks who clog arterial Star Wars websites with complaints about George Lucas charging too much for the re-release of his re-re-re-re-release. The irony was not lost on me. After my searches coming up null, I realized that the only place I'd get a square deal would be E-Bay. Some, not all, of the people who sell stuff like this on e-bay are just your average everyday Jane or Joe, and not toy collectors. Those same Joe and Janes are probably days away from walking down the aisle, so they're feeling the need to ditch their Leia hairbun wigs and Boba Fett firing Jet Packs before they get caught up in Imperial entanglements. Nothing would spell divorce faster than getting ready to make your new bed with your new spouse, and you pull out some "The Ewoks Cartoon" bedsheets. Or draping your windows with some G.I. Joe curtains that at one time used to be a sleeping bag. Realizing that my twenties are advancing at a rate of 12 Parsecs, I knew that my time to own some Star Wars toys was winding to a close. In my mind I'd probably be buying my own kids toys, instead of getting them for myself within the next 10 years or so. So I knew my window of opportunity was rapidly closing.

Doing a little research through E-Bay I came to two conclusions:

That I wisened up and realized that 75 dollars would be better spent elsewhere. Sure, having the Bespin/Cloud City Carbonite chamber is cool and would somehow rekindle some kind of remembrances of a time when I had epic Storm Trooper vs. Transformer battles on the carpet of my parent's VW bus, but today's Carbonite Chamber is tomorrow's Death Star action kit, and the next day's Dagobah set, etc.

The other conclusion is that George Lucas is filthy, filthy rich. As I searched page after page of Star Wars toys that people were ditching to make room for their bongs or their matrimony pictures, I realized that Lucas made a KILLING off of the Star Wars franchise. Everyone owns the VHS tapes and everyone in my generation at one time owned at least one Star Wars toy.

Luckily, my brother-in-law Dan helped ease my need to buy SW toys by giving me all of his old ones. As I said earlier, nothing is dorkier than bringing over your childhood toys into your married life. "Thank you Katie for marrying Dan. Not only have you given me a brother-in-law, a niece, and a nephew, you've also given me the opportunity to be beneficiary of your Husband's old toy collection. Thank you one eyed Willie, thank you...You've made my day." (sorry for the random Goonies quote, it's been that type of day)

Back to my search for Houston Astros vintage clothing...

It's funny how at one time, the Houston Astros colors and uniforms were the bane of Houston's existence. Leave it to the seventies and Houston to give us a team with burnt orange, yellow, white, blue, and red colors. When you wanted an instant headache, all you had to do was go to the Astrodome and stare at the outfield seats. I like to think that the former owners of the Astrodome had grand ideas about what the Astros were. I like to think that they honestly believed that there would be so many people in the Astrodome that it wouldn't matter what color the seats were.

I can just imagine that conversation:

"We don't have any more green, black, red, or blue colors for uniforms. The Yankees, the Cardinals, the Dodgers, and the Tigers have the color market cornered. We have some orange though. I think we have some yellow also. Maybe you can mix that up with some red and blue. This IS the sixties after all, kids will like that color pattern. You don't have to worry though, since Houston is such a booming oil town, there will never be an empty seat."

Fast forward to 1987 where a crowd of 18,000 wonder why the Astrodome seats haven't been updated along with the scoreboard.

Fast forward to 2003 when everything 80's and 70's is suddenly back in vogue. It's no longer uncool to be seen in red, orange, yellow, and blue. Shit, if I had known just how popular this stuff would be, I would never have donated a thread of clothing to Goodwill. I'd be sitting nice and pretty in my 100,000 dollar house, paid completely off E-Bay receipts.

Where in the hell was I?

Right.

So I'm looking through E-Bay for different types of Astros clothing apparel. I'm actually pleasantly surprised at just how much Astros stuff there is to find on E-Bay. Everything from mesh hats to those shiny nylon wind breakers that were so popular on cold trips to Astroworld. Who knew?

I find what I'm looking for and see that there are only about an hour and a half left on the bid. Being 2:00 in the morning, I figure that it's safe to go ahead and place a bid on my old-school Astros jersey. I put my cap at 50 dollars give or take a few dollars. The current bid was 39.00 dollars. So I bid 40. And I was outbid. And then I bid 41 and I was outbid. Anya reminded me that if someone has a maximum bid already listed, then no matter what I put in, as long as it's below their max I'll be automatically outbid. So I went ahead and put in 50.00 dollars for my max. And the screen said that I was outbid, but only by a dollar or so. So I put in 52.00 dollars. And for a few shining minutes, that jersey was mine. I went to bed, at around 3:30 in the morning, with about 20 minutes left in the bid I assumed that I'd wake up the next day and find a "you've won your bid" statement on my screen. But alas, I was sniped at the very last minute by someone who bid a dollar more than mine. Curses. Oh well. There is another jersey which is better than the one that I bid on that finishes in a day or so. Maybe I'll try for that one.

I could tell off my 5 minutes on E-bay that E-Bay could potentially be the most addictive form of internet purchasing there is. If Amazon is pot, then E-Bay is Crack and Heroin in a syringe, with the plunger halfway pushed. It's your morning latte that you've been drinking for the past 45 years like clockwork. It's mostly old and arcane stuff, that people have been collecting for years going for hundreds of dollars.

Stuff on E-bay that runs for 50 dollars would only be about 30 cents at your local thrift store. But that's the kick. If you happen to find what you're looking for at a thrift store, then you're one of the lottery winners. That's why you come to e-bay I guess. If there is something that you're looking for, you're bound to find it there. Just like that annoying commercial says will happen.