Massive Additions to the Luke Jackson Rainbow

My parents went to Vegas for vacation recently. Not trusting my dad (haha), I asked my mom to take $100 and play it for me to see if she could win me some money. Well, she actually did win me some money. So I decided to invest it in my cardboard needs.

The same day they left town, I saw a seller list two cards that I needed. I swooped in at the last moment and got a lot of orange:

I was able to snag this orange auto and its uninked brother:

I paid roughly $56 shipped for both of them. Not bad, but still a little pricey. However the next card I got was an absolute steal:

You may remember a few months ago that I was selling some of my cards in an attempt to raise enough funds to buy this card. You may also remember that I posted how the seller was being shady by having a shadow bidder try to run up the price.

Well, that auction ended at more than $200 and it looked like someone won it. A few weeks went by and it popped back up on eBay, being sold by the same person. Evidently, the shadow buyer bid too much and the kid didn't sell the card.

This time, he set the auction price beginning at $9.99. I bid on it first, but was outbid. I decided to wait and try to snipe it at the end. The bidding reached $26 and then stalled. With a day and a half to go in the auction, the seller cancelled the auction.

Knowing the guy was shady, I sent him an email through eBay to ask if he sold it or what the deal was. He let me know that he still had it but had an offer of $130 on the table, to which I replied, "That's good. You better take it, because the last one of these had a raw Beckett grade of 9/10 and sold for $92." He quickly responded asking if I was interested in the card for a bit over $100. I told him that I had just bought a 1/1 auto'd plate for Far less than that and that I didn't really need his card.

He came back at me a couple times, but finally his desperation to sell the card got the best of him. I got the card for a fraction of what he was originally asking. Unfortunately, that meant that I had to do the deal through a non-eBay avenue, which made me ridiculously nervous. I was afraid that I would ever see the card - or my money - again. Fortunately, he held up his end of the deal and I received the card in the mail today.

As far as the autographed portion of my quest goes, I need only the red refractor, superfractor and orange wave refractor to finish. Unfortunately, I don' think that I will ever be able to afford any of those.

But hey, you never know. I never thought I would be able to pick up this purple auto, either.