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Sunday, May, 26, 2024

Card #1,000. 1996 Pacific Silver #298 (Maybe I Should Buy a Lotto Ticket)

           What a week this has been. In my last post, I mentioned that I was one card away from hitting the milestone of one thousand different Herschel Walker cards for my collection, lovingly known as the Herschel Hoard.

          I had decided that not just any run of the mill card would do, but that it needed to be special. It would have to be one of my top ten, most wanted cards. I stated that there may not be any new posts on here for a long time, because I was going to wait until the right card came along.

          Above is that card, amazingly, found in less than a week. It is a 1996 Pacific Silver #298 card, featuring Herschel Walker. There are four versions of this card in the set. Each color version has 450 cards in the set. The first is what I call the Copper. It's not officially named that, but the color at the bottom of the card front looks copperish to me and that is the only thing which differentiates each set. Second is the Blue, which according to the TCDB, were inserted 9:37 in Hobby packs. Third, is the Red, which were inserted 9:37 in Retail packs. Fourth, the Silver, about which is said, "Inserted in special Retail packs." There is no mention of the ratio, but I would assume it is quite small. The space for this Silver version had been blank at the TCDB, for as long as I've been collecting Walker cards and I started seriously in the mid 1990's.

          I don't know if it's fate, karma, luck or whatever, but just a couple days after my last post, I clicked on EBay and there it was: 1996 Pacific Silver #298! I rubbed my eyes in disbelief. I've been burned before, thinking I had found a rare card, but after getting it home, realizing I had been too hasty, and it was not the exact card I was looking for. I perused the item description and saw the menacing words, "only one left." The price was more than reasonable, and I had to have it. A quick click and the words, "Your purchase is complete.", filled me with joy. It ticked every box. A top ten most wanted card for the Hoard; the one thousandth different card collected; a card from Walker's active playing days.

          Incredibly, that's not all. Right after I purchased this card, I clicked on the, return to search, button. After scrolling down a bit, I came across a SECOND TOP TEN MOST WANTED card! Needless to say, a second purchase was quickly made. I'd felt as if I'd hit the Comstock Lode. That card will be featured in my next post. All in all, an incredible week of collecting.