Comments: I believe Chipper Jones belongs and will be a first ballot inductee in a few years. Always liked him. I was at a game once sitting in the first row and yelled 'hey' as he was coming off the field. He looked at me, went into the dugout, I got distracted, and his batting gloves hit me in the shoulder, fell to the ground, and I watched the kid next to me pick them up - still in shock. Those should have been mine. Initially I picked up a 2001 Bowman Heritage card for him and had it graded an '8' in May, 2007. But, eventually I settled on Jim Thome to represent that issue. So, after looking through hundreds of Chipper cards I settled on the 1999 Topps Gallery card and picked up a graded '9' on eBay in November, 2009. It's my understanding, these cards were inserted at a rate of 1:12 packs. With 20 cards in the '53 Heritage subset, the true odds of pulling a Chipper card were 1:240 packs or 1:10 boxes! Anyway, I've been trying to upgrade to a GEM ever since but no slabbed tens have come up on eBay. Raw cards really don't surface that frequently and it's just too hard to tell if the card is worthy from an online scan. They sell for about $5-$10. In January, 2013 a "Proof" version of the card popped up on eBay and it looked really clean. The odds on these are 1:48 packs; or finding a Chipper at 1:960 or 1: 40 boxes. I picked it up for $5.35. It was shipped off to PSA ….

UPDATE: In late May, 2013 I sent PSA a group of 175 raw cards that I had purchased at shows and on eBay over the course of several years for grading/authentication. I waited two plus months for the submission and during that time decided to have a little fun. Normally, I get the email from PSA indicating grades are available and I go online to review the results. When I receive the package I open it up look through the cards and start the scanning process. The entertainment ends there. This time I decided to do things a little differently but it would take extreme discipline. I didn't go online to look at the grades and the package arrived for pickup on August 23, 2013. I asked my wife to open the box and randomly distribute the contents into a large storage bin. The bin went into the closet and each day for the next 6 months my kids would take turns pulling out a card for me. One card at a time, it was like Christmas every day. I'm involved in a private chatroom of sportscard collectors where I would post a picture of "The Card of the Day" for the guys to follow along. The kids loved it too! It was so fun I tagged on two more submissions (one for 15 cards received back in early Dec, 2013 and another 53 card submission returned in Feb, 2014) and lumped them in with the other cards as they came back from PSA. The original 175-day quest has now turned into almost a year-long adventure.

This Proof card was Day #140.

UPDATE: On January 17th, 2014 my son handed me a 1999 Topps Gallery Jones card in a MINT 9 holder from the submission described above. It was Day #149. Still searching for a 10...

UPDATE: It's August 30th, 2015 and earlier today my snipe won an eBay auction for a raw proof card - looks cherry; $3.80 +$3 S&H. No luck.  In September, the card arrived mint but centering is off left to right just enough to make it a stretch for a '10'.  Bummer.

UPDATE: Purchased a base card for $4.50 inc. S&H in late September, 2015 and received it a few days later. Another NM-MT/MINT card. No chance for a 10 on this one either.

UPDATE: I had a chance to buy a PSA 10 Proof card in Feb, 2017 but couldn't pull the trigger at $200:

UPDATE: I have not had much luck finding a PSA 10 example of the 1998 Topps Gallery Jones card.  It was a really decent portrait but then I found another card in really liked... the 1997 Donruss Diamond Kings card.  I purchased a couple raw examples on eBay in 2019 in hopes of finding a gem copy.  I submitted one of them to PSA and got a MINT 9 back.  It's not quite a ten but it will do for now.  I think I like it better than the Topps Gallery card as a portrait for Chipper.  What do you think?

UPDATE: In May, 2020 I picked up three more raw examples of the 1997 Donruss Diamond Kings cards on eBay from the same seller. They appear to be mint. Maybe one of them will get a '10' rating from PSA...

UPDATE: I submitted seven examples of the 1997 Donruss Diamond Kings card to PSA in March, 2021. The cards were finally returned in August, 2022 and none of the cards warranted the elusive GEM MT rating - total bummer: