Every artifact that found its next collector.

We don't get nights like this often — the whole family together, tunnel-side, the night Jayson Tatum came through. Tatum doesn't sign for everybody; plenty of nights he walks straight past without stopping. This one, he stopped.

One by one he signed for Christian, for Caeden, for my wife — three cards, three real autographs, three grins that made the whole trip worth it. Then he started to move on. Card number four, mine, wasn't going to make it under the pen.

That's when my wife stepped in. While I was still standing there holding my card, she caught his attention one more time and asked if he'd sign just one more — the Net Marvels, the one I'd been hoping all night we'd walk away with. Those comic-book style inserts are some of my favorite cards in the whole hobby, and he turned back around and signed it.

So no, I didn't get my own autograph handed to me that night — my wife got it handed to her, on my behalf. But the card that came out of that tunnel is the one going up for sale, and its real story isn't the signature. It's the mom who wasn't leaving that tunnel without it.

This is the story that went with it in Stories for Sale. You can read it here for good — you just can't buy this one anymore.