The one that got away

I had hoped to post some very happy news soon. But life, as it will, has other ideas. Let me explain.

I keep an alert active on eBay for Garroway-related items. Most of it is run-of-the-mill stuff – old press photos, copies of Fun On Wheels, etc. – and most mornings I just glance at it and then delete it. But one day last week I saw one of those listings that simultaneously made my heart leap, and sink. The reason my heart leapt? It was an auction for a kinescope of the December 6, 1952 episode of Your Show of Shows, which Garroway guest-hosted while Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca were away.

I’d stumbled across articles about this while working on the manuscript. It was reportedly a good show, and Garroway brought back some of the offbeat stuff he did on Garroway at Large. Such as the dentist sketch, where Garroway performed a dental procedure on the viewer, a bit so effective that it made one critic’s teeth ache.

There was no way I could pass this up. But I’ve tried bidding on kinescopes before, and I know they can be in demand. I also know the bidding can get high.¹ I knew I could end up spending more than I really wanted. But where else would I find this? And I also know how eBay works, and I’ve had enough items sniped from under me to know you can’t rest until the auction’s over. It felt like a fool’s errand, but I bid what I could afford, and I left it be. I tried not to think about it, but I couldn’t help myself and checked every now and again. Sure enough, another bidder swooped in and outbid me right before the auction ended, winning the auction for just a couple dollars more than my maximum bid. No kinescope for me.²

I’m philosophical about it. As I said, I know how eBay works and I know how it gets used, and even if I hate the online auction format I know it’s part of the game, and I accept that going in.³ But, still, it bums me out to have lost out on this item, and I think you can appreciate why.

I lost out, but I salute the winner of the auction, and I wish them happiness with this piece of history. And I have a request: Please don’t sit on this thing. Please don’t squirrel it away. Please get it transferred and upload it to YouTube or the Internet Archive or something. It’s Garroway while he still had a lot of the Chicago School still in him. It’s a priceless document of a particular moment in television history and in Garroway’s life, and there’s a lot of folks who would really love to see it. Please do us that favor. We would be grateful.

1. Example: Several years ago a network-produced short film about how the television network worked, showing priceless footage of its facilities at mid-century, came up for bid. I bid what I could. Even the network archives tried bidding on it. None of us came through and the film ended up selling for, I think, more than $600. Fortunately, the winner was a civic-minded soul and soon made it available to us all.
2. Knowing eBay as I do, I know that even if I’d counterbid, the nature of eBay competition is that your rival bidder is still likely to have counterbid more than you will, unless you put in some absurdly high amount. As I said, I’ve been around. I operate by a rule somebody taught me more than 20 years ago: put in the absolute maximum you are willing to pay, period, and then leave it be.
3. You would have to know me to fully understand it. But I’m just plain uncomfortable with competing against somebody else for something. I don’t have the heart to outbid somebody who wants something, even if I want it myself. Then again, I am also somebody who can be haunted all day by a commercial. You would have to be me for a day to understand it.