What eBay Hath Wrought 103: The Rip Card Replacement

One of my goals for the proceeds from the Derek Jeter Rip Card I pulled and sold on eBay was to get a lower-priced Rip Card that I would feel okay tearing open. I didn't necessarily care who the player featured on the card was, so I searched eBay for 2014 Unripped Rip Card and sorted the listings by the auction ending times. Then I put in the same maximum bid (adjusted for shipping costs) for each listing until I was either outbid or won the auction. I was kind of hoping to get a Jose Altuve, but the one that fell to me was a Craig Kimbrel card numbered # 11 / 50. Then I had to wait basically forever for the card to arrive in the mail. I scanned the front and the back of the card pre-rip, and then I tore into it.

Inside the card, sandwiched between two pieces of black plastic film (to prevent unscrupulous individuals from holding the card up to the light and seeing what was inside without ripping it) was an extended-set mini card of Mets pitcher Matt Harvey. Not the most exciting thing to pull from a Rip Card, but that's okay. It was still pretty exciting to spend a week anticipating what I might find inside. I'll probably turn around and sell the ripped Kimbrel card and the Harvey mini on eBay again and see if I can get enough out of them to try another rip.

 And here are some scans of the Kimbrel card post-rip. The front was pretty much untouched, but the back got pretty torn up by the process. After pulling the tear strip down the center and seeing where the mini card was positioned, I used an X-Acto blade to open up the side flaps and access the card without completely destroying things. I saw a guy open a Rip Card during an online break, and he absolutely tore the thing apart. They still retain a little residual value if you keep them as intact as possible, so I wanted to avoid that with my own rip.