Living with disappointment

Disappointment.

It happens to all of us from time to time. We don't get a promotion we think we deserve. We don't get a good parking space at the store. We hit the card aisle and there aren't any shiny new 2011 Chrome Value packs with orange refractors. You know what I mean.

Well sometimes, if you're really, really lucky, disappointment can be a good thing. The guy who gets the promotion gets transferred to Yemen (I've seen it happen). The Jag that got the good parking space gets clipped by a teenager in a big pickup (witnessed it). You buy a rack pack of 2011 Lineage because you don't want it to look like you came to store just to get cat food.

I grabbed the first Lineage rack pack on the peg as I shuffled dejectedly toward the register. I put it on top of the cat food and had to stop Joe Genius at the register from putting the 7 pound bag of cat food on TOP of the rack pack in a bag.

Being a typical collector, I do two things when I get in the car after purchasing cards. I start the car (it's still brutally hot down here) and I rip some wax. Or plastic. Whatever we're calling it these days.

The top half of the rack gave up a '75 mini of Kevin Youkilis. I forgot to get a pic of it, so here it is, courtesy of checkoutmycards.com.




Thrilling right. I do NEED it for the set, but it wasn't what I needed to get over my disappointment.

This brings us to the bottom half of the rack pack. You know, the one where you don't expect much because you already got your mini from the top. Well, I open it, start shuffling through the cards and this amazing card is sitting right there in my hot little hand:




Wait for it....




wait....











I'm normally a pretty laid back guy, but I can admit that I let out a little (read: big) yell right there in the parking lot. An honest to goodness ON-CARD Ian Kinsler auto. I was stoked. Honestly, I hadn't seen any of these on any blog so I didn't even know it was in the set. I don't see it on any checklist either.

I've been pretty lucky this year at pulling hits of Rangers. I did it twice in my Gint-a-Cuffs box, once with Josh Hamilton and once with Michael Young.

I don't how long this will continue, but I can accept being "disappointed" as long as this is the result.