In 2026, Twitter is largely useless. The "For You" feed, which becomes the default if you don't toggle carefully, shows you an endless scroll of things that are decidedly not for you. If your team is, for instance, playing the Philadelphia 76ers in a hotly contested NBA playoff series, it will show you high-engagement Sixers tweets, all of which are clearly intended to get a rise out of their opposition. The "Following" feed seems to update like clockwork every 28 minutes; there is nothing to follow.
But, occasionally, out of the darkness comes a reminder that connection can still exist. That there are people trying to do favors for the sake of doing favors. That there are oddball opportunities that can hit your open eyeball like a raindrop.
Such is the feeling I received when, as a collector of eccentricities, I saw someone offering a 1999 Upper Deck Ovation card featuring slugging first baseman Mo Vaughn wearing an Angels uniform, signed by Vaughn, for the low price of $7. First come, first serve. The tweet had been posted six or eight or 12 minutes before. Was I really the first to be served?!
I’ll take it!
— Adam Weinrib (@AdamWeinrib) April 30, 2026
Did I want this? Yes. Why did I want this? Does it matter? I watched Vaughn hit towering blasts as a kid, homers that pierced the space-time continuum and looked more apropos in 2026 than they did when he was drilling them. By the time Vaughn came to visit me in New York as a member of the Mets, his physique sagged. He looked more husky than Butch. But, at his peak, he was a supernova. The chance to get his autograph for $7, without him pictured in a dreaded Red Sox uniform? It was the kind of random "Gotcha" moment that reinforced my cardinal rule: Will you miss the money? Will it even make a dent? If not, make yourself happy. This mantra may come as a surprise to my friends who know I hem and haw on prospect investments, making them in theory more often than I do in reality, but ... is it $13? I have to think about it. Is it $6? Won't miss it. Goodbye.
That's a bad card
— Andrew (@pintandrew) April 30, 2026
Well, you're no fun!
Then, of course, life happened. I forgot about the card. The interaction escaped me. I went five days without checking my mail, and when I walked past my mailbox, 16-pound Cavapoo slung over my arm, and decided to open it on a whim, I wasn't targeting any sort of seratonin burst.
And there, sitting in a smaller-than-standard envelope that might under other circumstances include a note passed between classmates, a folded-up check without proper security or, in the worst-case scenario, glitter, was a $7 reminder of how easily the hobby can take many shapes. How collecting can be whatever you want it to be, as long as you have a personal rule to never block yourself from feeling joy over less than half the price of a Sweetgreen salad.
Mo Vaughn Anaheim Angels autograph materializing out of nowhere is a reminder to never close the door on your '90s childhood
Looking at the card in person for the first time, I thought about how silly I would've found the design as a 9-year-old pack opener. I would've run my fingers over the crass ridges, wishing I'd opened something cleaner and more valuable. Was this a rookie card? Signed? Nope. Just a stupid Mo Vaughn. He chased the money and went west and now you can print his image on top of a baseball and call it art. To the discard pile!
But now? I find the objectively silly design enthralling, a portal to a place and age I can never go back to (Ok, Don Draper). I think of how excited 9-year-old me would be if the same Mo he'd offhandedly roasted was approaching him, crossing the foul line to the crowded mob clustered by the dugout in the blistering heat. I'd have handed him a program and a sharpie, wedging my pudgy and sweat-soaked hand through the mob hoping for paydirt, but I would've vastly preferred if he'd presented me with this card instead, neatly inscribed and encased.
Sometimes, the kindness of strangers can make such a moment possible, 25 years too late and on a whim. You just have to be in the right place at the right time, willing to surrender the price of three Twix bars to fuel your fire.
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