Who Doesn't Love Bowman Chrome Gold? Tracking Down a PC Grail!

Today's card is a major, major addition to a long-dormant PC that used to encompass at least 50% of my collecting life. It's not that I don't still like this player or remember the good times or care. My personal interests have shifted primarily to vintage items over the last 5 plus years and with that change came a lack of searching for modern cardboard and a lack of desire, to be honest. However, some cards pop up and have to be chased no matter the situation....and this is most certainly one of those pieces of cardboard.

Gooooooold baby, sweet sweet gold! When I spotted this 2005 Bowman Chrome Gold Refractor Auto limited to 50 copies and graded a 9/10 by BGS on eBay, I knew I had to make a run at it. It's about as good of a Matt Kemp rookie as I could hope to land with the Super and Red highly unlikely. His '05 BoChro rookie has always been a favorite of mine when it comes to Bison cards. The seller was parting ways with his own Kemp collection and this was up at $200 OBO. I threw out an offer I fully expected to receive a counter on and much to my surprise and delight, it was accepted. I paid and patiently waited for my PC centerpiece to arrive.

And wait and wait I did as days turned to weeks. The card made it to Los Angeles where I was living as of this spring and then just died on the USPS tracking. I opened a case with the post office and they quickly closed it, determining the card was lost in the ether. I reached out to the seller who refunded me as we both bemoaned the state of shipping and soon thereafter I packed up and moved to Las Vegas. I mostly forgot about the experience of having such a cool and sought-after card simply up and vanish.....

....until a month or so into my time in Sin City when I randomly received a notice from USPS Informed Delivery letting me know a package was due to arrive. I wasn't expecting anything and looked up the tracking only to find, much to my horror, that it was arriving in Inglewood, California -- my former stomping grounds. I immediately knew what it was -- my precious Matt Kemp Gold Rookie Auto, heading to a place I no longer lived and a place that was hundreds of miles away.

I reached out to my former landlord, hoping the new tenants would be kind enough to set the package aside for her rather than throwing it away or opening it and taking the card. In a stroke of good fortune, she let me know the apartment was still vacant and she would head over to see if the package was in the mailbox. As the above pictures indicate, the bubbler was safe and sound in the mailbox and my Mattycakes was available to be sent my way. I paid her for the shipping costs and a few days later it showed up in my current mailbox.

Rare is it that a lost package story ends like this and I'm forever grateful it worked out in the end, albeit with a disappointing three months or so in the middle where I wondered if I would ever find another one at the same price or less. I reached back out to the seller and PayPal'd him the original purchase price including shipping. We were both whole in the end and both happy. This stunner will always reside in my Kemp Collection, even as I have parted with some of it and have more of it I am looking to send off to better homes than mine.