Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Seneca Wallace /10 #2, or Why you should always send that message, no matter how random

While many of you get your kicks ripping wax and opening boxes, a lot of my cardboard excitement comes from the thrill of the hunt, generally via Google. Most of the cards I want are already out there in the world, so it's up to me to track them down by any means necessary. So I'll Google the rare stuff often to see what I can find. Usually it's a dead end - I'll get an email saying that the site is expired, or that they no longer have the card, or I won't get a message back at all. But sometimes my message is returned, which is how this post came to be.

While searching rare Seneca cards the other day, a personal Comcast website popped up with someone's card list. One of the listed cards was a Seneca Wallace Press Pass 2 color jersey #'d to 10 copies. Seneca only has 6 cards at the /10 print run level, and I already owned one, so this would be a major find for me if it worked out. I traced the username to Ebay, took a chance it was the same guy, and sent a message asking about the card. Here was his first message back:

"First of all, yes, that's me, but how the heck did you come across that link? I'm pretty sure it's been several years since I advertised it anywhere. Nice find :) I am 99% sure I still have that card. I'd have to dig through my box of jersey/auto cards but can't imagine I don't still have it.

Here's a scan of it: (link to his photobucket)

Make me an offer (a fair one, please) on the card and it's yours. I also will take ps3 games in trade.
"

I was psyched. Exactly the card I thought, and one I've been chasing for a while. So we messaged back and forth, hammered out the details, I sent some paypal (a very good price) and he said he'd ship the next day. I messaged him back to say thanks, and he replied with something that made me laugh:

"
Thanks for the easy money. 'Hey, you know that card you forgot you had from a list you made up 7 years ago? Yeah, I wanna give you some money for it!' Yeah, tough deal for me, LOL."

Three days later the card was in my mailbox. Man am I glad I sent that message:
There are four parallels to the JE Jersey card for Seneca, and this is the rarest one (I also have the most common, which is /250). I've never seen this card or any other version of it available for sale online, so I definitely lucked out picking this one up out of the blue, and I 100% got good value since I paid less than more common Seneca versions are selling for.

The patch itself is excellent - I think the little yellow piece is from the "IOWA STATE" lettering in the middle of Seneca's jersey. It can't be part of the name plate because the back of the Iowa State jerseys had the letters surrounded by a blue border. So I'm guessing this is an I, or maybe part of an E. Regardless, pretty excellent little piece of jersey, especially since I randomly found it through Google!

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