An accidental 1/1

Over the past month, I went on a certified autograph spree. I’m not quite sure why. Perhaps it was my lack of TTMs and I needed to fill the void. I enjoy certified autos very much, I just never really actively shop for them. I’ll always take them in trades though, which is how I’ve acquired most of the ones I had before this little binge.

Anyhow, I notice a lot of Yankee prospects that ’m a fan of had some newer 2013 autos from Bowman, Panini, and Leaf (Leaf?!), so I put in a few low bids on eBay and won a few more cards than I planned on, but nothing was overly expensive, so no real harm. A little Christmas-time treat for myself, I said.

In my aggressive bidding, I won two of the same Rafael De Paula Leaf autographs. Or so I thought. De Paula is an intriguing prospect who was the Yankees representative in the Futures Game last July. No big deal, I was happy to have the cards and felt like I could find a home for the dupe. Then it arrived and I realized it wasn’t a dupe at all!

The first one that arrived is this purple refractor-type card from Leaf. It was numbered 28/50 on the back, so a nice low number, whatever that means. 

Then the second one arrived a day later. I was expecting more of a shine-less base card since the eBay item description said “This is not the numbered version.” That’s all it said. Knowing nothing about Leaf and their tiers/parallels, I just figured this was somehow less rare.

So I flipped it over, and sure enough, no number. But upon inspecting the front, I saw a different logo. It was a “Holiday Bonus” logo. Faintly under the logo, I saw 1/1 hand-written. No way, I thought. It has to be written on the penny sleeve. I slid the card out of the sleeve, and sure enough, 1/1 stayed on the card. Holy crap!

So I checked eBay and found a bunch more 1/1’s of different players with “Holiday Bonus” on them. Turns out, Leaf issued a few Holiday Bonus packs with autos and relics from previously released Leaf products.

The seller definitely missed this, and I did too until it arrived. I paid $2 for this card, and it could probably fetch $25-30 on eBay, maybe more. Not a huge number, but certainly a nice return on my investment.

Has anything like this ever happened to you?