If someone were to sort through my football card collection, they’d have no way of knowing my favorite team or player. My collection is a mishmash of cards that are inexpensive and photogenic - like this 1991 Score auto of Henry Ellard. Great player, awesome card design, and amazing auto. I’ll break a $5 bill for this any day.

In three decades of collecting, I’ve never owned a serial-numbered card that matched the player’s jersey number - until lightning struck twice this week.

I nabbed this 2002 Upper Deck 40-Man Rainbow of Orlando Hudson #’d 3/40. When I received a shipment of cards from Burbank a few days later, I found that the 2004 Leaf Certified Materials Mirror Gold Richard Hidalgo I purchased was #’d 15/25. Just like that, $3 cards immediately became $5 cards (that’s retirement money!).

I recently picked up this gem mint Mirror Gold card for barely more than the cost of grading. This set is notoriously condition-sensitive, what with its easy scratching and bubbling, so a PSA 10 of a player even of Davis’ caliber is worth the price of admission.

I just received my quarterly binge order of sportscards from Burbank and this gem is one of my favorites. As soon as I saw this card online, I imagined Kevin Lockett’s mom responding like an upset parent receiving bad fifth grade school photos:

“What’s this? I got you all made up for your rookie card photo shoot and this is what you come home with? What’s wrong with you? How am I supposed to send this to your relatives and tell them you’re a professional football player? Call Upper Deck right now and ask them for a re-do.”

I’ve been grabbing up cheap copies of 2002 Upper Deck XL Holofoil cards (#’d to 65), and at this point I have 62 cards, or roughly 10% of the set. Put another way, I have 0.15% of every Holofoil card they produced that year.

I’m not pursuing this whole set because I’ll go broke or insane in the process, but it’s a fun parallel to buy when the price is right.