White Whale Whacked: Topps Star Wars Jedi Legacy Jabba's Sail Barge Relic Leia Organa

The Topps Star Wars Jedi Legacy product released in 2013 had quite a few good hits in it. They are pretty rare, though, which means that even with relatively cheap boxes available it doesn't make a lot of sense to bust wax in search of them. I was able to pick up a Carrie Fisher autograph from the set early in 2014. It is a pretty cool card, but one thing that really set this product apart were the relic cards. There were a couple varieties of fur relics, including fur from the Chewbacca costume and a set of relics from the various Ewok costumes. I actually pulled one of the Ewok relics from a box I opened, but I sold it at some point. But the one card I wanted most was the Princess Leia variation from the Jabba the Hutt's Sail Barge relic set. The relic cards feature part of the sail from Jabba's barge, and they only fell one per 14 boxes. With 5 different variations, the Leia variation was probably seeded about 1 in 70 boxes. A few listings have been up on eBay for a couple of years now, all in the $100+ range, which is a price I wasn't willing to pay.

A couple of months ago the eBay consignor probstein123 posted a copy of the card as an auction with a low starting bid. The title of the listing seemed to be missing some information, but my Leia search casts a pretty wide net and it popped up in my feed. I put in some bids on it, but I didn't feel like I had much chance of winning. The auction ended and I emerged with the winning bid at a price that was about 1/3 of what I felt was reasonable and about 1/5 of what the long-sitting auctions were set at. I paid and then I waited.

Over a week went by without a shipping notification and I was sure that the price had just been too low for them to send me the card. Reading the seller's negative feedback confirmed in my mind that this might be the case as there were several mentions that an item had not been shipped, possibly due to a poor selling price. At this point I was certain that the seller had realized the vague nature of their auction title and decided to hold the card back or relist it. I felt a little bit guilty about winning it at that price, but that guilt was countered by me really wanting the card and the fact that I have been on the other end of disappointing auction prices before and always sent the cards with as much care as I did the cards that oversold my expected price.

I sent a polite (important!) message stating that I had not seen a shipping notification and inquiring as to the status of the item. A couple of stressful days later I got a message back along with a tracking number. I half-expected that the envelope would arrive empty, but the card was there and now it is mine. I am super-excited that I was able to track this card down for my collection because I was pretty well convinced that it wasn't going to happen.