Late nights on Ebay again have not only yielded one of the best things Can Ball Ray has found in weeks but also one of the strangest. Not strange in a two headed cat kinda way but in a makes you think "Why" kinda way. Check out which of your current Raptors has a pretty highly priced rookie card that happens to have Hall of Fame written all over it ...
So when I was a kid learning about the game of basketball, I had a friend that loved the Lakers while his older brother loved the Celtics. They would argue for hours on which team was better and it would always come down to a player by player comparison. But when older bro pulled the Bill Russell out, the argument ended and little bro would make me play him one on one at the playground court and beat me senseless to get his frustration out.
That is when I knew that Russell was something of a special player.
As I got older, read more stories, watched more tape, listened to more interviews I really got to appreciate how good Russell was as a player.
So you can imagine my shock when I found this particular basketball card on Ebay last night. Here you have a pretty nice card that features three autographs and three pieces of a game worn jersey from three different players: Bill Russell, Yao Ming and ... Andrea Bargnani?
Andrea Bargnani?!?!?!? In the same breath as Yao Ming let alone Bill Russell?!?!
I suppose I can give allowance because this card was his produced during his rookie year (making this a pretty damn nice rookie card to have in your collection) and he did have such high expectations coming in as the number one pick in that year's Draft. And really, this is a very nice card. Three autographs and a piece of each one's game worn jersey? Pretty impressive sans Bargs. On top of that, the card is a short print and this particular one is number one of three adding more to the collectibility factor.
I'm not sure if down the road you'll be making comparisons between the careers of Russell, Yao and Bargs because Russell is in a class all his own. Shoot, I don't think you'll even be comparing Yao and Andrea all that much. But I'm sure that you'll remember that there was once a time that a trading card company had thought that they would be clever and put all three players together for a very special edition trading card and laugh to yourself thinking what I'm thinking now - the guy that brainstormed this pairing must be shaking his head wondering why he didn't get to pick the three players for the next set of super rare, autographed/game worn basketball player combo cards.
FYI - Even if I had Mark Zuckerberg money, I wouldn't have dropped the amount this guy wants for this card.