My Greatest Pack Pull Ever

Yesterday I was off doing my thing, running some errands in the town where I grew up - oil change, hair cut, returning library books, dropping three trade packages at the post office and stopping by Walmart to get a couple of things for a family dinner today.

I popped into the card aisle, with no plans to buy anything until Gypsy Queen comes out. I had already snagged plenty of Heritage even though I have no plans to collect it this year. (Speaking of which, if you need Heritage, please let me know and I think we can work out a deal. I have a chunk to trade.)

So, at Walmart, I decided to reward myself for some mini-good things of late and snag one of the value boxes with two packs of Heritage, a few backs of flagship and a special card of either Mays, Mantle or Griffey Jr. I pulled the Griffey, which is up for trade.

I took the value box to Subway for a bite of lunch and commenced opening packs. Three cards into my first pack out popped my best pull ever - by far. It was only the second auto I've ever pulled in a pack.

The first was this Ted Wills from last year's Heritage, a card I still have but would trade for a similar veteran Red, Tiger or Cub auto.

At Subway, sitting all alone in the restaurant, I stared at the card (featured below), not quite believing it even though I knew it was legit. I smiled and giggled - no, cackled! - and surely creeped out the nice woman waiting by the fixins for her next customer.

My first thought was "What an awesome addition to my collection!"

A few minutes later, I guessed this was probably a $50 card. Frankly, I don't know much about these things. I entertained no thoughts of selling it.

But, later, when I looked into it, I decided I couldn't keep this piece of cardboard. In a nutshell, it should fetch enough to pay for the insanely overpriced Cinderella breakfast we're taking my young daughter to next month during four days at Disney World - plus perhaps even one of our overnights. That could be a nice help.

As you can see, I pulled 01/25. A couple of others have sold on ebay for $175. 

Truth is, I'm not much of an auto collector. I don't go out of my way to seek them. I would balk at paying much of anything to stand in line for an auto - even of a favorite player. In fact, at The National last summer, I chose not to pay $79 to get Al Kaline or Johnny Bench to sign a card. Those are two of my all-time favorites.

I did obtain a slew of autos at The National (see post) as part of my gifted ticket package - and it was awfully fun to do - but in general it's not my thing.

While having a Hall of Fame auto fall into your lap is pretty great, I'm thankful this card doesn't feature Ernie Banks or Kaline or Bench or Frank Robinson. It eases the guilt factor of pursuing the dollar over the awesome card. If one of those four had signed this card, I'd be deep in a heated internal struggle right now.

Thanks again to the bloggers - Dustin at Coot Veal, Robert at $30 a Week and Kyle at Juuust a Bit Outside, who saw yesterday's post and wrote me about ebay procedures. I'm leaning toward going this route and, if I do, I have a much better idea going in thanks to all of your help.