Better than expected- a single card Elton Brand post

You ever have one of those experiences that is pretty much a no-lose situation to begin with, but turns out to be even better than you expected it to be? I had that recently, and it involves my latest Elton Brand addition.

A few months ago, I committed to buy an Elton Brand card on one of the Facebook card groups. I don't even remember which one. I'm in a lot of them and there is one friend who tags me whenever he sees an Elton card go up for sale. He tagged me when this one came up, and I knew I didn't have it so I committed to buy it. I got talking to the seller but he was in the middle of a move so it was delayed about a month. No big deal.

I didn't really look too closely at the photo he posted of the card. I didn't need to. I knew it was an Elton I didn't have, so that was good enough for me.

After he moves, I send him the Paypal- a grand total of $3. The USPS does it's work, and it arrives in my PO box.

When I get it, I finally see- it's a shoe piece! Wow! This is only my second solo piece of shoe from the NBA, and first Shoe piece from Elton! (I have a couple other multi-relic cards with shoe pieces, but none are of Elton)

For some reason, even though most of the time the players wear each set of sneakers for one game only- sometimes not even a full game- you rarely see pieces of sneakers on cards. The most recent one in my collection is in fact this one, from 2001-02! I know Panini has issued some but I have not been lucky enough to pull any.

The photo is a posed photo, 2001-02 is when he joined the Clippers, Champions & Contenders was a late season release but they chose to use a posed photo instead of action anyway. Who cares, I got a new Elton that's my first sneaker piece :)

Just to give a little perspective, I have of Elton
38 jersey cards
3 multi-relic cards (2 of which are SPx Winning Materials - 2 relics of Elton, one is Luxury Box &1, 4 different players sharing a card)
4 Shooting Shirt
9 Warm-Up
2 shorts
12 unlabeled (but probably jersey- I wish Panini would include what kind of materials you get on the card)
1 Warm-Up Jacket
1 Shoe (This one) 
70 total relics of Elton

I'm 99% sure he has a wide margin over the next closest person in my collection, but I have no idea who that might be, relic wise. Overall cards he doesn't even make the top 10 because he simply doesn't have as many cards as others like Jordan, Kobe, etc. There are still a ton I need, so I'm working on changing that but it takes time when you don't have a lot of money to spend hunting singles anymore. This shoe card is my 463rd Elton overall. The Database lists 3075 of him, so I have a lot of room to expand!

I don't do a lot of single card posts, but this one warranted it for sure. Thanks for reading.