The art of pure joy

Its a really rare occasion to have a time where worry subsides and pure complete joy overcomes you even for a brief moment. This may sound psychotic to many but one of my very few moments came from obtaining a simple baseball card.  I have been working on collecting every 2012 topps chrome/base/opening day/mini Ichiro possible for awhile now. I came to the realization I will never get every parallel for a superstar future hof but one card that I had a great desire to obtain and felt was a possibility was the SSP variation. Not technically a parallel but a variation of the same set nonetheless  It has eluded me for a very long time that I resigned to the fact I will never obtain this '12 Topps chrome Ichiro super short print(ssp) the first time topps made a variation print in their Topps chrome line. They only made 20 different ssp's of different stars and the odds of getting just ONE of them is 1 in 912 packs of topps chrome. Which means the odds of getting the Ichiro I longed for was about 1 in 18,240 packs. I searched and searched for this rare card for as long as I can remember until it finally showed up randomly on ebay one wintery thursday night in my daily search for this card. my heart stopped and I couldn't believe what I saw was this coveted card available and even better a buy it now option so the suspense could stop that second. This card is very rare though the price point is mid range, I probably have at least 50 cards worth more than this one but the sheer rarity and hunt for this card makes this by far the most valuable card in my collection. I absolutely love the design and photo. To me its the perfect most beautiful card ever. It resembles his original 01 bowman chrome card that I also own and is also one of my favorites plus costs 3x as much but still doesn't compare in my opinion. The day I stumbled across this card for purchase was sheer luck and good timing,  I would have paid three times the buy it now price just to have it and that moment it was mine was a moment of pure 100% joy. Call me crazy, everyone else does but one of the best finds and moment of excitement in awhile!