The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus makes the surprising discovery that nobody wants to buy anything associated with O.J. Simpson:
After his 1995 acquittal in the slayings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman, Simpson is about as close to an untouchable as this country can get. Pete Rose was banned from baseball for betting on the game, but some people still like him. He even sells a limited-edition baseball, signed by him, with the inscription, “I’m sorry I bet on baseball.” People buy them because they like Pete Rose.
Vick, the disgraced Atlanta Falcons former quarterback, was a big name as recently as this summer. Then he pleaded guilty to taking part in dogfighting, a practice Americans place just above child pornography, and today his material has vanished. Bill Huggins, co-owner of the House of Cards in Silver Spring, had a signed Vick jersey in his window this summer, at a price of $275.
After Vick’s guilty plea, “a kid who works downstairs asked if he could buy it. I asked him what he’d give me for it. He said, ‘$25,’ and I said, ‘Sold!,’ ” Huggins recounts. Similarly, he has an early Simpson trading card in near-mint condition on sale for $45. He’s had it for years. No takers.
As Huggins points out, Simpson had notable on-field accomplishments, but nobody likes him. If people don’t like you, there’s no power, no hip factor to owning things that you have used, touched or signed. Your memorabilia is yesterday’s trash — the one thing in life nobody collects.
“I don’t sell O.J. stuff, I won’t touch it,” says Jerry Miller, who has run the Miller Boys, a sports memorabilia business, for the past 35 years, based out of his home in Warminster, Pa. “I’ve been offered Simpson stuff. I wouldn’t take it for free. . . . He got away with it [the murders], but a lot of people, including me, think he did it. Then he was cocky about it.”
Heh.
October 4th, 2007 at 8:34 am
[...] Free Britney wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt“I don’t sell OJ stuff, I won’t touch it,” says Jerry Miller, who has run the Miller Boys, a sports memorabilia business, for the past 35 years, based out of his home in Warminster, Pa. “I’ve been offered Simpson stuff. … [...]