Not What I Was Expecting, But I'll Take It (The Problem With Parallels)

Last month I purchased a 2014 Topps Supreme Red Jon Singleton card from an eBay seller. It had been on my watch list for a very long time, and the price was low enough that I eventually caved in and picked it up. 

Here is the picture from the auction. It's numbered # 03 / 10, with a sticker autograph. This product had a lot of parallels, and they all blend together after a while. I think I was getting ready to leave for my two weeks in Utah when the card arrived, so I tossed it on the card pile and scanned it along with the other cards I received during that time. It was only later, while I was cropping images to upload into my blog, that I noticed something off about the card. The serial number didn't match the card I remembered purchasing.

These are the scans I had in my folder. This is the Orange parallel, numbered # 02 / 15. I went back and checked the auction listing to make sure I'd purchased what I thought I'd purchased, and saw that I had indeed purchased the Red # 03 / 10 card and not an Orange # 02 / 15 card. Then I went through and tried to find out if maybe I'd purchased both cards and somehow inadvertently switched them. I am pretty sure I never purchased the Orange variation, and I couldn't find a Red variation in my collection anywhere. All signs pointed to the seller sending me the wrong card. I don't know if I can blame them too much. Aside from the serial number and a slight difference in background color, these cards are pretty much identical.

Since the price was so low and I didn't already have an Orange card in my collection, I decided just to keep the card without going through the trouble of filing a complaint. I've been watching for the # 03 / 10 to pop back up for sale, but it hasn't yet. This might be a bigger deal to me if the player/card value were different, but at Singleton's popularity level there isn't a lot of difference between low-numbered parallels. Maybe fifty cents or something. Certainly not more than the price of postage to send it back and forth across the country a couple of times.