245-8 who do we appreciate?

the answer to that question, at least for today, is jason repko. twenty years later, i finally have his 2006 upper deck card safely stored in my team binder

to be fair, i haven't been searching for this card for twenty years, but i have had a saved ebay search for "2006 repko 245" for at least the last couple of years. the reason for this is that it's an unheralded player whose singles aren't typically offered up on the site as well as being a a corrected error card. the back of this particular card tells the story

repko as card number 245 in the base set is difficult to find. in series one packs, repko's card was issued as number 283

and those are much more easily obtained. that's the version i've had in my dodger collection for the last two decades, but it is the error, so i decided to keep an eye out for the corrected version. that version was only available in fat packs (according to baseballcardpedia) and i suppose there were fewer fat packs distributed than other series 1 product.

i was compelled to create the saved search when i was entering my dodger collection into tcdb in 2022 or so (i still have a long ways to go to get the rest of the collection entered) and saw the one unchecked box in this team set. 

a year or so later, i was entering my non-certified (ttm and in person) autograph collection and came to this one in the binder

wouldn't you know it? the card i sent to jason repko back in 2010 when he was in the twins organization was the card i needed all along

obviously i was not aware of the error/corrected versions of the card back then. it's all good now, thanks to an ebay seller who sold me the card for just a couple of bucks.