The Pull of a Lifetime

***This post was written by Jason and you can follow him on Twitter @jasonw757.

It was a cool Virginia evening when I pulled into my local card shop to pick up a couple of boxes of 2017-18 Upper Deck Series One Hockey that I had pre-ordered. As I waited for the shop employee to finish up with the other customers, I spied a new release on the shelf, boxes of the brand new 2018 Star Wars Masterwork. I was intrigued by the appearance of the product because it was packaged like Museum Collection Baseball, which I have had good luck with in the past. I am generally not a non-sports card collector and stick mostly to Baseball and Hockey with a tiny bit of football thrown in.  I am admittedly a closet Star Wars nerd so I have read all of the books, seen all of the movies and love to have lightsaber battles with my daughter in the living room at home, so I kept looking back to the box on the shelf.  When I was paying for my Hockey boxes, I jokingly told the guy at the register that “The Force keeps calling me to that box” with a laugh. We discussed what was in it and the product details and he convinced me to try a mini-box of it. He picked up the pack and told me “The Force is Strong with this one” and we both had a good laugh at it. I told him that if there was a Mark Hamill, Carrie Fischer, or Harrison Ford auto in the box that I would treat him to dinner that evening (the guys in the shop love to order Pizza from the shop down the way in the shopping center).

Immediately I ripped into the pack of Star Wars, I was saving the hockey for later, and began to thumb through the cards. They were very high-quality cards and seemed to be well done by Topps. Then it happened. I got to the card in the pack that everyone anticipates.  I looked and first saw the serial number 3/5. I smiled a little thinking that this would be a neat card, but was probably the signature of some minor characters like random X-wing pilots, characters from the Mos Eisley Cantina or something like that. It never crossed my mind that this could be the big one.  Next, I saw the signature of Hayden Christensen who played Anakin Skywalker in the prequel trilogy. I thought this was pretty cool figuring that the other signature would be Qui-Gon Jin, Jar-Jar Binks or someone else from the prequel movies.  Then I saw it.

The top autograph was none other than Mark Hamill, Luke Skywalker himself!  My hand began shaking and I was speechless! This card was signed by both Anakin and Luke Skywalker and was numbered out of 5! The shop worker quickly took it from my hand and put it in a one touch to keep me from dropping it.

After a little talking and congratulations from everyone in the shop, I got in the car to head home. As I settled in the driver’s seat, I took a deep breath and looked at the card once again just to make sure that it had really happened.  I got home and showed my wife and she was as excited as I was. She has always been a big Star Wars fan also. She asked what I planned to do with it and I told her that since the card was an autograph of father and son (in the Star Wars world) that I only thought that it was appropriate that I pass it down to my son one day. Hopefully he will be a Jedi like his father before him (wink, wink),  and will appreciate the Star Wars World and will be as excited on the day that it becomes his as his father was the day it was pulled.