My Rarest Gretzky

I'm not the player collector type for the most part, but despite that I have amassed a decent collection of Wayne Gretzky cards over the years.  I don't have any autographs or anything truly fancy, just a bunch of cards in the $5-or-less range for the most part.  The one notable card I do own would be his Topps rookie, which is one of the cornerstones of my hockey card collection, period.

Recently though, I was able to land what is undoubtedly my rarest Gretzky card to date.  Behold!

A junk wax '90-91 Upper Deck card?  Well, sort of.  This is a 25th Anniversary Buyback from 2014-15 Upper Deck.  Each one of these was stamped with a foil marking, which you can see just to the left of Wayne's shoulder here.  They are also hand-numbered out of /25.  This was actually the second time Upper Deck issued buybacks of the '90-91 release, as they did a 20th Anniversary version in the 2010-11 flagship set (those were not serial-numbered).

I've mostly stuck with Topps baseball when it comes to buybacks, but this card of The Great One proved too tempting to resist.  I watched it listed at $30 for a couple of weeks, too rich for my blood.  When it didn't sell the owner listed it again at $25, and again it went untouched.  A third attempt saw the card listed at $20, honestly a very fair price given what I've seen these go for (and the fact that this is the greatest hockey player of all-time we're talking about here).  The seller must have been pretty frustrated at this point, because the next day it went up for the paltry sum of $12.50.  I couldn't purchase it fast enough!

The best part was I had just gotten an email a couple of days earlier with a $10 coupon for achieving a positive feedback rating of 1,500, so that all but eliminated the cost of the card.

So there's the story of how I grabbed a Wayne Gretzky #'d to 25 for all of $2 out of pocket.  I have fond memories of this set from my youth, and how can you not love a card featuring the best hockey player ever to lace up skates rocking that sweet Campbell Conference All-Star sweater?

While it might not be an appealing card to some, I'd have to say this was one of my most satisfying pick-ups of 2016!