First big fish of 2012 for the Seneca Collection

As I've mentioned before, Seneca pickings are getting slim these days.  Just part of the game when you get closer and closer to a master set.

So when a /5 popped up on Ebay a few weeks ago, I nearly jumped out of my chair.  Super rare Seneca that I still need - SIGN ME UP!  One issue though, price.  See, I'm in the process of buying my first house (if all goes well I'm in by the end of this week) and since a lot of my recent money is wedding deposits I have to be careful with my funds to be approved for my down payment.  Basically your money for a down payment (for you non home buyers) needs to come from certain sources and not other sources.  A lot of my wedding money falls under the "doesn't count" sources so I need to have way more than my down payment amount in my back account to ensure I have enough money.

I should have plenty, but I'm still playing it safe and the Ebay price for this was a hefty $75ish.  As I've said before, $33 is the most I've spent on a Seneca, so...yeah that's a lot.  It was BIN/OBO so I tried up to $30 delivered but was countered at $45 delivered and had to let that walk...so sad.

So I lamented this fact publicly on the Blowout Forums in a quick thread, basically saying "Whoa this card is nice, bad timing though, maybe in a few months?"  A few people responded saying it was too bad and hopefully it'd still be around, but then a few other people did something weird - they started making offers.  Now Seneca is a guy with very little card interest outside of me and Ames, IO residents, and so even the 2 offers after I made my offers was strange for this card.  But with the attention in that thread all of a sudden there were 7 offers on the card - all people trying to win the card so they could hold it for me until I could afford it!  So nice!

Then one guy did one better - he said to take the $45 offer and he'd give me $20 to help me out.  I anticipated it as a loan but he insisted it be a gift since he too has been through the home buying process while collecting and understood the hurdles it presented.  I couldn't believe his generosity but gladly accepted it and made another offer to the seller - the card was almost mine.

The seller was funny - he was definitely surprised to have so many offers on the card and was wondering where the sudden interest in Seneca came from.  I (and a few of the other offers) linked the Blowout Thread and explained where everything started, and he agreed to sell it to me as a gesture of good will.  He was impressed we all banded together like that and we got to talking about the teaching profession in our back and forth.  All in all the seller was a great guy, and I'm happy he was as moved as I was!

In the end, the card was mine.  Here's the Mirror Emerald, one of three I've found in the world (the 1/5 appears to be in a private collection or lost, the 5/5 is in a private collection.  Mine is the 4/5):

I love the jersey piece and the shoe piece has a nice stripe too.  Here's the back:

Figured I'd group all my mirrors together to show how nice they all look.  The Gold has a nice mix of stitching and 2+ colors, and the blue still has that sweet shield piece.  I may have to upgrade the red and /1250 base someday to keep up with the other sweet patches!

And the backs.  All the same except the numbering, but that's what it's all about in the card game these days.  And the fronts are awesome so who cares!

Many thanks to the Blowout community and this seller for helping me pick up Seneca #232 and adding a sweet rare piece to my collection!