Flashback 2000: Hunting a lost talisman

The odd thing is, I knew exactly where this guy was stashed after 25 years.

     Am I the only one surprised to realize that I've been using eBay for 25 years? For some reason, online technology still seems "new" even though of course it isn't. When I made my first purchase, over a quarter century ago, I used the power of the internet to retrieve something I'd lost and wanted back. This is from when the column appeared in the Features section, and was 50 percent shorter than it is today. 

     The box came. A blue, white and red Priority Mail carton, with a lovely maroon oval "INSURED" hand stamp. I checked the return address: Las Vegas, Nev. This was it!
     I have never anticipated a package the way I had this one. I hurried into the apartment. The boys called happily from upstairs. "In a minute," I said, and went into my office. Shut the door.
     "Thirty years," I muttered to myself, fumbling with the box. Of course thinking of the Sidney Greenstreet character in "The Maltese Falcon" clawing at the wrappings around the black bird.
     Two weeks earlier, late one weary afternoon, I had put aside work and plopped online, looking for distraction. I plugged into eBay, that vast network of sellers and buyers. What in the world did I want?
     When I was a child, I had Rat Finks. They were little charms, an inch high. A mouse with beady eyes and an addled grin — the mascot for a hot rod. They came in gumball machines and cost a dime. I have no idea why I loved them, but I did.
      I carried a Rat Fink for years, as a talisman, as a friend. If my mother stopped and gossiped in the supermarket I would pull out my Rat Fink and gaze at it, rapt.
      The last Rat Fink was orange. I remember it clearly. The ears had melted into stumps by trips through the dryer. The tail of course was gone. I was in the May Co. department store in Cleveland, playing on the escalator. I gave the Rat Fink a ski ride down the trough next to the moving handrail, planning to retrieve it at the bottom. But at the bottom it was gone.
     That was 30 years ago. Since then, I had kept my eye on gumball machines, toy stores. Once, I wrote to a Rat Fink collector who was advertising in a toy magazine. But he didn't reply.
     That first minute on eBay, I wondered whether anybody possibly would be selling Rat Finks. It seemed a long shot. I typed the words into the search engine.
     There were 151 Rat Fink items for sale. Model kits, posters and dozens upon dozens of the gumball finks I was looking for, some in their original packages.
     I browsed. They were getting money for the things — $45 for one sealed in its bag, with the Rat Fink oath.
     No need for that. I found one in less-than-pristine condition. The tail was gone, but the tails of mine were always gone. Opening bid: $6.99.
     The eBay software is amazingly simple. It leads you by the hand through registering.
     No one bid against me. The sale ended, and I was directed to dispatch a check to a Michael Devinney of Las Vegas. Writing out the check — $9.50 with shipping and insurance — I was still uncertain about the whole thing. Las Vegas: Isn't that where all the crooks are? Still, what was the risk? If I could learn that eBay was a rip-off for under 10 bucks, that would be a lesson worth the tuition.
     The dingus was so well-wrapped, I finally had to use a scissors. Out tumbled the Rat Fink. It was the same. Beady eyes. Big leering grin. I smiled broadly, as if imitating the lump of red plastic in my hand.
     A colleague at the newspaper had warned me about seeking out beloved childhood objects on eBay  — "They aren't the same ones you owned," he said. "They're somebody else's." But he was wrong. This wasn't somebody else's Rat Fink — it was mine, now. I slipped it into my jacket pocket, and together we went upstairs.

      — Originally published in the Sun-Times, March 21, 2000