Best Deal I've Ever Gotten on a Football Card

This past Sunday I checked out a card show at the Best Western in Woburn, Massachusetts.  I have to be honest and say that the atmosphere was somewhat depressing.  This is the fourth card show I've been to in the last 5 years, and each time I've found myself pacing around a sparsely populated hall with a bunch of strange, older, over-weight, odd smelling gentlemen flipping through dust-covered binders and asking myself "What am I doing here?".  Don't get me wrong, I am not knocking anyone's way of life at all, it's just that as an athletic, 30-year-old I feel out of place.  Sort of like I'm in a "one of these things does not belong" sketch from Sesame Street.  Am I the only one that's ever gotten this vibe at a show?  Am I a total jerk for feeling this way?  Maybe it's the OCD side of me...

Anyway, I got off topic there.  I must not feel too out of place, because I did decide to attend the show after all, nobody was twisting my arm about it.  Despite the off-putting vibe of the place, I scored some great cards that made it worth the drive.  The '83 Topps Sandberg RC I posted recently was a card I'd been seeking out for years and was happy to shell out $5 for.  Today's card may be an even better pick-up, despite the fact that I wasn't searching for it specifically (in fact I never even knew it existed):

Pretty cool, huh?  While I am a football fan, I'm not a football card collector.  I don't have anything against football cards, it's just that baseball and hockey give me more than enough to try to keep up with.  To put it in perspective, I have 9,990 baseball cards and 11,664 hockey cards in my inventoried, online collection at the moment.  For football cards, I've got 102.  When I saw this card though, I was instantly intrigued.  It's from the 2007 Topps TX Exclusive set, and contains an authentic ticket stub from Super Bowl XXXIX, as well as an autograph of the subject, Rosevelt Colvin.

I love the ticket stub concept on sports cards.  I've seen a few baseball and hockey sets where the design emulates a ticket, but I don't recall any that embed an actual ticket stub in the card.  The fact that this is a Super Bowl ticket makes it even cooler.  The fact that the Patriots won that Super Bowl, their third in four years, made this a card I couldn't resist.  I've checked out some Super Bowl tickets from this game and this definitely does appear to be a legit example.

Colvin, although hampered by injury at times, was an effective player for the Pats for a few years.  He was a member of two Patriots Super Bowl Champion teams, and started at defensive end in Super Bowl XXXIX.  Over his career he tallied more than 50 sacks, had 3 interceptions and 280 tackles, and forced 17 fumbles.  Not Hall-of-Fame numbers but a solid career nonetheless.  The autograph is a sticker rather than being on-card (or I guess on-ticket).

On the back, I'm assured by Topps that the ticket stub is authentic, and that the signing of all Topps autograph cards is witnessed by Topps representatives to guarantee authenticity.  I'm not sure how re-assuring that is.  It doesn't really matter though because guess where I found this card?  In a 3 for $5 bin.  Can you believe that?  Since I had to pick two other cards to go with it, I grabbed a couple of Red Sox relics...

A Victor Martinez Clubhouse Collection bat relic from 2011 Topps Heritage.  Another guy who's struggled with injury.  Detroit managed to qualify for the playoffs without him this year, but imagine how much better their lineup would look with his bat supporting Cabrera and Fielder.  I'm not huge on relic cards, but this one is well done.

There's a nice big cartoon on the back, however I wish they had based it around the card subject rather than this generic cartoon about pulling a relic.  Oh well...

Continuing my trend of players who have battled injury, my final selection was this 2009 Allen & Ginter Rocco Baldelli relic.  Rocco had a ton of promise when he first broke into the Major Leagues with Tampa Bay, but a strange muscular disorder derailed his career.  After missing the entire 2005 season due to injury, he never topped 100 games played over his final 5 seasons.  Ultimately, he was out of the game by age 29.  The main reason I wanted the card is that Baldelli hails from Woonsocket, Rhode Island, which is in my neck of the woods.  Not many Rhode Island natives have made it to the top level of any professional sport, so for a cheap price it was at least an interesting relic to add to my collection.

Pretty decent results from a 3 for $5 box if you ask me.  I would have paid $5 for the Colvin card alone, and with the two Red Sox relics sweetening the pot this was a no-brainer.  Definitely the best deal I've ever gotten on a football card...