Tuesday, October 27, 2015

What are the odds?

During the NBA playoffs earlier this year I thought I would treat myself to a box of cards. Not that the playoffs made me want to buy something, they just happened to be in progress when this event took place.

I knew I wanted something late 90's-ish. The only problem is basketball boxes from that time period tend to be a bit pricey. After some quick searching I ended up with a box of 1999-00 Topps Gallery, that if I remember correctly cost around $45 on Ebay.

I should also probably mention up front that this box was pretty unremarkable, content-wise, save for the two cards that are being featured here.

So for those unfamiliar with the set there was a parallel set called "Player's Private Issue" that were serial numbered to 250. And remember this is before half the cards in every box were serial numbered. The odds of getting the PPI cards was 1:17 packs, so I beat the odds by pulling 2 out of 24 packs.

Ok, enough with the build-up. Take a look at the pictures below and see if anything jumps out at you:


And the back

Notice any similarities? At first I thought it was interesting that I got parallels of both the John Stockton cards in the set. And then to realize that they were both #'d 208/250, well that was just plain weird. I'm not particularly good at math, but I'm guessing the odds of that happening have to be somewhat staggering. If anyone can figure out the numbers I would love to know.



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