Imagine this: Let It Be on vinyl with real Apple label, vintage sparkly blue and gold Wings belt buckle, two original mint-condition People magazines from the 1970s with the Beatles and McCartney on the covers, a rare Back To The Egg song/pictures/post card treasure book, and some Sgt Peppers trinkets.

Granted, not a priceless Beatles memorabilia collection. But my savored relics collected over decades, nonetheless. Most had been in a box in the garage since my teens, with a few additions over the years. On a recent spring house cleaning purge, I’d thought, hmmm, maybe ebay could make it worth parting with them.

So I took some photos and decided to sell them as one lot of memories – one price takes all. $79 and it’s all yours! I expected a quick response. Nothing. No takers. Come on, $49 and you win! No one gave a rip. Lowering the starting bid to $29, I was hopeful. Nope. Okay, you’re a dumb shit if $9.99 doesn’t grab you. Zilch. Guess everyone’s a dumb ass.

Ahh, a bargain basement bidding frenzy may do it, right? Okay then, here you go: Start the bids at $6.99. Boom! Immediately, I got one on the line. Holding, reeling. Two days to go. Nothing. One day. Rats. Down to the last 3 hours. Boom. Another one bites at $7.49. Okay, this may be fun. Waiting…waiting. Come on, bidding war. Sigh.  Never happened. Sold! $7.49 plus postage.

It was just an experiment, okay. It was only the second thing I’d ever sold on ebay. I wasn’t really too emotionally attached to this stuff anyway, though it hurt a bit to let it go for so little. But it wasn’t doing me any good in a box in the garage so I figured getting anything was better than nothing.

Carefully, I packed it all up in a nice secure package. I even threw in a bonus book that my wife and I had written a few years earlier about being financially responsible. And what the heck, when I printed out the pre-paid postage label it cost nearly a few bucks less than the original estimate. So I was actually making about $9 on a bunch of dusty memories. Not bad, I’ll take it.

But when I took the package to the post office, I discovered that I’d underestimated the weight by over a pound (most of which was probably due to including my frickin’ bonus book). That darn lying bathroom scale cost me another $7 in postage. So I promptly called my wife at work to complain, “I made a big whopping $2 on all the Beatles stuff.” She felt for me. That’s all I needed. And off the package went to Las Vegas to some balding, middle-aged geek who probably didn’t like the Beatles anyway. Figures.

That should have been the end of the story. But it’s always great how no good deed goes unpunished. Three days later, I checked the shipping status and saw that the package had arrived at the buyer’s doorstep that morning. So, being the caring and compassionate person that I am, I sent an email asking whether the package had gotten there safely.

Yes, the package arrived just fine. But there was disappointment over the fact that one of the magazine back covers was apparently missing. Hmmm, I hadn’t recalled that but I couldn’t argue about it now. I apologized. The response was still negative – that magazine was the very reason he’d bought the lot. Come on dude, you got a steal, I thought. But instead, I graciously offered a $2 discount and he seemed happy enough. I could see right through him, though. There are always those complainers who want just a dollar to two discount no matter what (hmmm…sounds like me!). And no thanks for the bonus book either.

So…did you do the math? I made a big impressive $0 on my beloved Beatles and McCartney stuff. I guess that proves that no good deed really does go unpunished. Should have just given the damn stuff to the Goodwill. They would have made mint.