The Value of a Ball

The Old Man took me and LilBro to ball games as kids and now I take my short people, but as many games as I've gone to, one thing I've never done is come away with a ball. There are four ways a fan gets a game ball -- catch a foul ball or home run, have someone near you catch it and give it to you, have a player flip the ball to you, and have the ball boy or ball girl flip one to you. Would a ball you caught yourself mean more than one that got flipped to you? Would it mean more to get one from a ball layer than from a ball boy or ball girl? Or is it something that is so scarce that the means are irrelevant? Anyone here ever actually caught one?