You’ve heard the saying “happy wife, happy life,” right? Englishman Paul Cohen apparently didn’t take it to heart and now his $50,000 collection of old programs and ticket stubs is gone.
According to London-based Fabulous Digital, Cohen’s wife Sherry got a tip from a friend watching on TV that her husband and father of their two children was at a soccer match, sitting next to another woman after he told her he was working. Sick of taking a backseat to the “beautiful game” for a good bit of their married life, Sherry Cohen gathered up Paul’s huge long-time collection featuring historic soccer stuff and put it on a local buy and sell website, priced at a “fiverr.” That’s a five pound note or the equivalent of $6.36 in the U.S.
“He’s always putting football ahead of our relationship and kids, and then to learn that he wasn’t away on business and at the game with another woman infuriated me so much that I just saw red,” she said. “So I hit him where it hurts.”
In the listing, she wrote about the “bucketful of incredibly rare” programs, describing it as “a very valuable collection priced to sell very quickly as I need to do this to get my life back on track.”
The buyer, who undoubtedly couldn’t believe his good fortune, came and picked up the collection from the stay-at-home mom of two young girls. Paul Cohen discovered what his wife had done on the Monday after the Saturday contest between Manchester City and Brighton after seeing the correspondence in his OnBuy account. Paul Cohen says the collection had been started by his grandfather and included hundreds of items including some valuable programs from the 1940s and 50s. He had intended to pass it all down to his kids.
Cohen claimed the woman he was spotted with at the game was just a random fan but admitted he lied about where he was going when he left the house.
“It definitely looked a lot worse than it was,” he said. “I accept that I shouldn’t have lied but she gives me such a hard time if I’m not around at weekends.
“I will never forgive her for what she has done. It was such an extreme reaction.”
Nevertheless, the couple is apparently still together, although things are “pretty tense,” according to a friend.
“Do I regret selling his collection? Absolutely not,” said Sherry. “My only regret is that I sold most of it. Should have kept some more in case I ever catch him doing this again.”
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