Serial number = jersey number

People are always looking for reasons for cards to be worth something.  One idea that seems to have stuck is putting a premium on cards that have a serial number that matches the player’s jersey number.  I’ve picked up a couple of cards here and there that were numbered with the player’s jersey number, but I never really had to pay a premium for them.

Back when I first opened my box of Topps Tip Off, I was so disappointed by the condition of the cards that I didn’t really look them over all that carefully.  I just boxed them up and sent them to Topps.  Topps was nice enough to replace the whole box card for card and once I had those back I started looking at what I had pulled in more detail.

I noticed that I had pulled both LeBron and Kobe in the red parallels numbered to 2008.  When I went to list them on eBay, I noticed that the Kobe was number 24/2008.  I figured that might cause the card to sell for $5 instead of $1, but I had no clue that the auction would close at just over $18.  That blows me away since that’s about half of what I paid for the whole box of cards.  If only it worked that way every time you bought a box of cards.  I’d love pulling most of the set and one card worth half of what I paid for the box out of anything these days.  Most of the time you’re lucky if you got half of the set and a card that you can sell for $5.

So, what do all of you think.  If you had the choice of two cards for the same price and one of them had the jersey serial number, would you prefer that one?  How much more would you be willing to pay for that type of card?  Does it matter more for high end cards than it does for parallels?  I’d love to hear what all of you think about this topic.

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