I’ll never forget the day: June 1st, 2007. I was playing tennis with my friend Peter, at ClubSport in Pleasanton. I had just opened a new can of Dunlop balls. We were hitting ground strokes to warm up. I bent down to pick up one of the balls. And there it was. . . a fucked up tennis ball.
I have been playing tennis since I was eleven. I have seen a lot of tennis balls. But I have never seen this. It’s the one on the right.
My first reaction was “This is a lucky omen.” Sure enough, I won. I have never lost a set using my lucky fucked up tennis ball. I retired it undefeated.
My second thought was “I wonder if this is worth anything.” There’s no point in having something special if you can’t sell it to a stranger. But how do you put a value on something like this? I became curious, and nothing good can come from that.
If this were a stamp, or a dollar bill, I imagine it would be worth a lot, and people would be eager to own it. I’m not so sure there’s a ready market for fucked up tennis balls. Maybe it needs a little extra. For example, I could autograph one of the other balls, and that would add another dollar to the value. I could take the third ball, rub it against my own balls, and include a signed statement to that effect, just to increase its conversational value. I’ll even throw in the container for free. It’s good for storing things, such as tennis balls.
You can almost imagine the conversational value once you have the three balls mounted on some sort of display rack in your living room:
You: Have you seen my special tennis balls?
Friend: What’s so special about tennis balls?
You: Well, for one thing, look at the label on this one on the right.
Friend: Wow. That’s fucked up.
You: The original owner of these balls never lost a set. They are undefeated.
Friend: They must be lucky or something.
You: The original owner was the guy who does that Dilbert comic strip. He signed this other ball, see?
Friend: Well, I’ll be darned.
You: This third ball is the most special of all.
Friend: How so?
You: The Dilbert guy rubbed his own balls on it.
Friend: You magnificent bastard.
You: That’s nothing. I got the container for free. I keep my coins in it.
Friend: I. . . I’m speechless.
You: By the way, your wife had her hand on my leg all through dinner.
As you can see from that hypothetical conversation, you would be able to win almost any conversation involving these tennis balls.
I could put these tennis balls on eBay, but first let’s see what value you, my blog-reading savants, can collectively come up with for them. What is an honest price that you, or someone you have talked to personally about them, would pay?
I assume the answer for most people is “zero.” But maybe there’s a collector out there who will surprise us.
I would be willing to pay elevendy billion dollars, for it is all the money that I have contained in my shoes at the moment. I could always get more from my Swiss acount if thats not enough though.
Posted by: MercedesJim | August 31, 2007 at 07:21 PM
i would pay one million turkish lira, plus shipping.
Posted by: jennifer castagna | June 16, 2007 at 09:30 PM
Hi,
I enjoy alot reading your blog .. you're full of ideas. Pleasent-to-the-mind ideas.
May be you want to check the URL to a blog entry .. "My Chat with ALICE"
I thought, ... it might ...
I don't know!
Please do not approve this comment. It was meant to introduce ALICE to you.
Thank you
O&O
Posted by: O&O | June 16, 2007 at 06:36 PM
Damn! I've been in Bangkok all week so I missed this when it was posted. I need to ask the wife first but if she approves I'll offer US$1001 for the set.
Posted by: John S | June 16, 2007 at 03:10 AM
How bout you paying ME to take a bunch of used tennis balls... rubbed wherever!! :S
Posted by: Suchint | June 15, 2007 at 03:20 AM
I don't even care what Scott's blabbering about, I'm drunk so what I need is a long and thoughtful discussion about BALLS. They're fuzzy, they're two inch across and they can take a licking all day!! Buddha on a biscuit, we're so lame we're discussing the TRADING VALUE OF INDUSTRIAL ERRORS. Our extinction is imminent. Put on your tinfoil hats and DEAL WESTIES.
Posted by: le Big MAC | June 14, 2007 at 10:28 PM
A while back you suggested we persuade Iran not to become a “nuke-you-lar” bomb power by offering to trade them Bush and Cheney’s balls if they would give up that goal. Now we know neither Bush nor Cheney would ever give up their balls merely to save Civilization from total destruction. But, they might trade their own balls first for something they deem actually valuable. So, why don’t you contact the White House and ask if they would swap you their balls for yours. That way you could offer them to Iran yourself. Maybe there would even be a tax deduction in it for saving Civilization.
[more irreverence at resistence-is-possible.blogspot.com]
Posted by: Lawless One | June 14, 2007 at 10:58 AM
$32.56 Canadian
some lint
half a box of tic-tacs
...its all I'v got in my pocket.
Posted by: Peh | June 14, 2007 at 10:24 AM
You sending messages?
The code I had to type in to get my previous post approved was "yeuhfw" ...
Oh well, some people will understand.
Posted by: neopolitan | June 14, 2007 at 06:26 AM
Lucky omen?
Superstition from the big athiest?
Now that is truly fucked up.
(To be honest I am a non-thiest with a lucky orange golf ball. You could think that is hypocritical, but really it is a ball that I got two of my extremely rare birdies with during a single round, and haven't played with since - it just sits in my bag. It is "lucky" in retrospect, I don't reach into my bag, pull out an orange ball and think "This is lucky!"
Talking about pulling out balls, this was an interesting article - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4253849.stm ... ouch.)
Posted by: neopolitan | June 14, 2007 at 06:24 AM
AC/DC song was about parties? as in:
"Some Balls are held for charity, and some for fancy dress
But when they're held for pleasure, they're the balls that I like best
My Balls are always bouncing, to the left and to the right
It's my belief that my big balls ahould be held every night"
Um, well .... you stick to your parties, and I'll get my balls held every night, mate....
Posted by: Jeorme | June 14, 2007 at 06:16 AM
One giga-dillion dollars.
Posted by: DL From Heidelberg | June 14, 2007 at 12:10 AM
Just send them straight to me. I will dispose of them in the fire as is rightly deserved. :-)
I will trade you three tennis balls for all of them.
Posted by: robotii | June 13, 2007 at 02:58 PM
Dunlop must be using the same "ball-imprinters" as Penn does. I just got a can of three Penn balls where two are messed up like that. Weird.
So much for QA on the tennis ball assembly line...
Posted by: doug | June 13, 2007 at 02:47 PM
What are you waiting to put it on eBay?!?!?!?!
Posted by: Cristiano | June 13, 2007 at 10:34 AM
As an interesting social experiment auction off the FUTB in one sale, DUTB (Dilbert on Tennis Ball)in another and the RUBTB (rubbed on Balls Tennis Ball) in a third. The bidding history alone would tell us a lot about human nature.
Posted by: amona | June 13, 2007 at 08:50 AM
Seeing from the comments here, I think you should try ebay. They got more savants there...
Posted by: Anshul | June 13, 2007 at 08:28 AM
Actual invented conversation:
You: Have you seen my special tennis balls?
Friend: Are you nuts?
You: I bought them from Scott Adams
Friend: Who is Scott Adams? The guy from Get Smart?
You: No, that is Don Adams and he is dead. Scott is the guy that created Dilbert.
Friend: What is a Dilbert?
You: Have you seen the comics in the Sunday Newspaper?
Friend: Yes, but the one I buy hasn't any Bildert, Guilbert, Whateverbert...How much did you pay?
You: Er, I was joking. Look, there is a fucked up ball
Friend: What. Does it have a hole or something?
You: No.The brand is not aligned between the seams.
Friend: Big deal you sissy. Now my friend is the tennis fashion guy and can't play with brand names that are not pretty.
You: Look Federer and Nadal are playing.
Friend: I get the beers.
Posted by: Ivan | June 13, 2007 at 06:10 AM
Dunlop
I think the real money making won't come from a collector, but from the company. If you keep writing about this F.U.T.B. (like how I used the new M.I.L.F.?) Dunlop is going to notice, realize you're making a big deal about it, and either pay you to shut-up or pay you to keep talking. Your choice, the easy way, or the hard way...
Posted by: The Intern | June 13, 2007 at 06:02 AM
I think you are seriously missing your mark, but if you wanted to go into porno you would probably be the best porn star ever since you are so precise!
Posted by: j | June 13, 2007 at 05:42 AM
Dear Mr Bongo, just wanted to mention that the AC/DC song is about Balls as in big parties that were often held by the Ton of London throughout the centuries and are now used solely to attract wealthy people you want to donate money to your cause...not testicles.
Scott - you are losing it...they are tennis balls, one got messed up in the machine that stamps on the company name, that is all. The fact that you thought it would be lucky because of this fuck up explains why you won the first game, the winning of the first game reinforced that notion and you thusly never lost while playing with that ball because you thought you would...mind over matter. If you signed one of the balls it would most likely get picked up for much more on its own than the fucked up "lucky" ball would, but that is only because people like you...not the balls.
Mind you now that you have written this blog about it, a seriously obsessed Dilbert fan might pay a bunch for it as a collector's item - but I doubt it would be worth serious money until you had been dead for about 100 yrs...then someone would find it in an attic and bring it to Antiques Roadshow and find themselves holding a $1 000 000.00 set of tennis balls...maybe.
Posted by: Joelle | June 13, 2007 at 05:36 AM
Hmmm... I stated a price already, but now it seems that some people are willing to go higher. I'm seeing a few "bids" in the twenties. Therefore, I must have underestimated your balls' value.
Therefore, I will revise my number to $26.89, which again does not include a reasonable shipping rate.
Posted by: Jabba | June 13, 2007 at 05:33 AM
Scott, you say you discovered the FUTB on June 1st this year. So you have been playing with it for less than two weeks. Also, you tell us all the time how busy you are.
This means that you can't have played many sets with the FUTB, so your assertion that it is a lucky ball is somewhat coincidental. How many sets was it exactly? I doubt whether it would be enough to be explained by anything other than you having a short patch of good form.
Also, you would get much more money if your balls were still attached to ball number 3. But then, as a few fellow contributors have mentioned, Shelley would probably not allow that.
Posted by: BobUK | June 13, 2007 at 05:23 AM
Glad to see Scott's got some balls.
Reminds me of the old AC/DC song 'Big Balls'
"He's got big balls"
"She's got big balls"
"But Scott has the biggest balls of them all!"
Posted by: MrBongo | June 13, 2007 at 05:10 AM
I'll give you $20. I'd display them in my home and am really curious to see how close I could come to duplicating your hypothetical conversation.
You should be careful, though, with ball #3 - if the ball smells like you, you might also smell like the ball, and dogs have really sensitive noses, and some dogs love to chase tennis balls ...
Posted by: Steve | June 13, 2007 at 04:54 AM