I'll Buy That For A Dollar

​Not to get all schadenfreude this morning, but some dude paid $518,628.00 for Tom Brady's last touchdown ball literally hours before Gisele's Husband announced his un-retirement, rendering that pigskin decidedly less valuable. It's tempting to feel a passing sympathy for the karmic lack of timing, but I can't quite muster it. What does one actually do with five-hundred K of equity sunk in a bladder of cheap leather and stitching that otherwise retails for $89 at Dick's Sporting Goods? Encase it in amber? Build a shrine? Mark it with a bloody handprint and whisper to it late at night like bearded Tom Hanks?
"Hey," people might say at your next soiree, while gazing up at the mantle, turf-stained laces facing out, "Is that Tom Brady's last touchdown football?"
"Sure is," you'd say with pride, topping off martinis all around.
"So how much it run you?" someone would ask.
"Oh, around half a mil," you'd say, with a modest smirk.
"Did you consider maybe donating that money to Gluttonous Purchaser's Anonymous instead?" the wife of Chet from accounting (who you've never really liked but Suzie insisted on inviting anyway) would say, and your face would flush and you'd stammer for a bit, a snappy comeback or even plausible answer on the tip of your tongue but ultimately eluding you, and so you'd have to settle for, "...but...it's...Tom Brady's last touchdown ball."
Things would be quiet through desert and everyone would leave early and Suzie would toss the dog blanket at you and make you sleep on the couch, but at least you'd be anywhere from between eight and ten feet from the ultimate trophy of the most storied franchise in all of NFL history, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Hey, as it says in Exodus Chapter 20 verse 4, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, so you might want to think twice about bidding on ultimately banal and meaningless objects of worship, let alone trust that The Golden Boy is ever as good as his word."