Inspired by the story of a man who sold Arizona Diamondbacks outfielder Luis Gonzales’ chewed bubblegum on the Internet for $10,000, Bingo Jensen eagerly roams NASCAR infields with a track pass and a collection of small plastic containers.

“Care to spit yer dip, Mister Carter?”

When Jamie McMurray’s crew chief obliges by squirting some brown tobacco juice into one of Jensen’s cups, the entrepreneur quickly caps the specimen and labels it with a Sharpie: Larry Carter 5/17/2008. Into his satchel goes the tiny amount of brown gold.

Jensen told blackflaggedonline it’s as much about having fun as it is making money: “Being close to the pit crews and meeting the occasional driver gives you the opportunity to ask some neat questions to some real interesting people. My question is usually will they spit into one of my cups, and the answer is usually yes. I don’t think most NASCAR legends realize that they are really giving me a unique biological collectible when they do that.”

Jensen hopes to have a website up and running soon on which he can exclusively auction his wares. TobaccoHeroesOfNASCAR.com is slated to auction the capsules of gently used dip and saliva to the public with bids opening in the thousands.

“A lot of folks tell me that’s an exorbitant price for what it is, but I tell them that first, they are underestimating the market and second, they don’t know how hard it is to obtain some of this stuff.” As proof, Jensen points to a framed picture of himself proudly holding a small container of dip at Talladega, covered in the track’s signature red mud.

“That’s Tony Stewart dip right there,” Jensen smiles. “Smokes always in a hurry on the infield and don’t talk to many folks, lest he’s got ‘em by the lapels, so I’ve never been able to get a spit from him. But a ‘Dega, sure enough, he walks right by me and I can see he’s about to let some fly. I turned around like a cornerback dropping into coverage, and that dip arcs through the air. I just laid out for it with my little cup in my hand. Bam, caught it on the fly.”

Collecting dip isn’t always that hard, Jensen says, “Fer example, I once caught Kenny Wallace right before he was to walk up to the set of Speed Network, and he was going to have to ditch his dip anyway. He basically opened up his mouth, and I’ll bet two cans of Skoal dropped right into my jar by the time he’d cleaned it all out.”

Jensen notes that the values of his specimens is always changing. “Fatback McSwain used to be an easy get. I’ve got a Coleman cooler full of McSwain’s dip spit at the end of any given race during the year 2005. Now Fatback is in management, however, that dip is tough to come by. But real collectors know where they can come to get the baccy juice spit by the man himself.”

The dip man also boasts the following wares — a Copenhagen “cutaway tin” Larry McReynolds once fabricated as a joke, a plastic cup from Sheetz a quarter full of Mike Ford’s dip spit from Denny Hamlin’s 2007 victory at the Lenox Industrial Tools 300, and — on his mantelpiece — a single vial of his own dip from the last lap of Daytona 2001 — “and I ain’t partin’ with that,” Jensen told us.