The Ebay one upping finally comes to an end in this grand finale, as a long lost card comes home

So I've been finding rare cards of my top two PCs left and right on Ebay recently.  It's straight up ridiculous.  So imagine my surprise when a trio of cards /10 show up on Ebay, with one being one I need for the Seneca Wallace collection.

Even after all the luck I've had recently, my reaction was like

So I threw in a nibble bit when I found it to ensure it stuck around and make sure I remembered it.

Then there was another bid.

A day later...another bid.

With hours to go there were like 5 bidders involved, and it was already at $6, with me losing.  I was...a little worried.  I actually emailed the seller to say, "Hey, if I lose, let the winner know I'll pay him for the Seneca."  The seller agreed to do so.

With an hour left, the card was at $8.  All this tension was all too much!  So with 30 seconds left, I went crazy and bid $35.  Just in case.

Final price: $9.50.  Even when people are bidding like crazy for a Seneca Wallace auction, they can only bid so much I suppose.  Besides crazy me anyways.

The first card in the auction, which I almost immediately sold because I have zero interest, was a Mike Williams one color jersey #'d 6/10.  Definitely not a bad little pickup, but clearly the third best card in the lot.

The second best card is the second rarest jersey card of Dave Ragone's from 2003 Sage.  Each player had a Master Jersey 1/1, with Platinum /10 being the next highest.  This one is 2/10, and contains a 4 color jersey - it looks amazing:

I know Dave Ragone probably does little for most people, but my littlest brother and I regarded him highly as David Carr's backup with the Texans.  He was on a lot of Madden teams as a backup back in the day.  He's also a lefty, so if I ever do start a left handed throwing QB collection, this would be one heck of a card to start with.  All around, this is one awesome "freebie" card since I would've happily paid $9.50 for the best card in the lot by itself.

That best card?  Oh it's just the Platinum parallel of Seneca Wallace, #'d 4/10:

It's barely BARELY a three color, but it's there.  There's a bit of blue cloth on the left notch of the circle, and then there's red under the yellow that shows through in a few places.  Very cool.

The story, for me, is even better.  I used to have some pretty epic stories about tracking cards down through weird websites and the like, and in those searches I actually DID track this card down once upon a time.  I found a website, in 2009, from like 2006, with this card pictured.  Same exact card.  I messaged the guy with a hope and a prayer, and he said, if he could find it, it'd be mine for $25.  I agreed, but he never found it, and so I sadly went on my way.

In 2011, another /10 popped up, this one being 2/10.  It was priced at $249.99, and it was an obvious fake patch, the only fake patch I've ever seen in a Seneca card.  I mean...look at this hack job:

Sage doesn't really do tag patches, and Iowa State was made by Russell, not Adidas, so this patch did not stand up to any scrutiny whatsoever.  I talked to the seller about it (he stood by the card being pack pulled) and said I could have it for like $150.  I told him I was thinking more like $15 since technically everything around the patch is still the legit card...but obviously we did not come to an agreement and I left knowing there were a max of 9 of 10 legit Platinums out there.

And then, a few weeks ago, in 2015, 4/10 re-emerged.  I don't know where it went for its 6-9 year vacation, but I'm glad this card finally made its way back to me.  I don't expect to find the Master Jersey (or player proof /20) jerseys for a while, if ever, so this may be the end of my Seneca Sage Jersey journey.  But if that's the case, it's been a great ride, and I'm glad I was able to get such an awesome card for my collection after such a long wait.