Redemption Replacement Roulette: James Neal Auto Relic!!!

I just received the results of my latest round of Redemption Replacement Roulette, and boy, this was a big one.

The original card came from 2011-12 Dominion. When the product was released, I was looking around for some of the cheaper hits. This was before I started compiling the Rookie Auto Patches, so if I found anything at all with a decent enough price point, I snatched it up.

The redemption I picked up, in this case, was an autographed rookie card of Anaheim Ducks left winger Patrick Maroon for only 5 bucks. As an added bonus, and I didn't realize it until I redeemed the code, but the card was actually a gold parallel, which is numbered to just 25 copies, which I figured would be good for maybe a little bit extra "equal value" when the replacement time came.

Sure enough, the waiting period had passed without a response, so I called Panini up and requested another card. As usual, I requested a card of a player from the Pittsburgh Penguins, but the customer service associate warned me that it was likely he would be unable to replace the card with another from the Dominion set. I was actually happy to hear that, because the likely Penguins replacement would have likely been one of the rookie auto patch cards that I already have.

A week later, I found a manilla envelope from Irving, TX and was ECSTATIC to open it and discover this card:

This card comes from 2012-13 Limited and features a jumbo swatch of James Neal's jersey, along with his autograph, and is serial numbered 10/49. A couple of observations on this transaction. First of all, this has to be my second biggest upgrade, next to the Evgeni Malkin for Kyle Okposo replacement, of course. Second of all, this shows that they are integrating their 2012-13 products into their replacement supply, which is good, because I've got enough Joe Vitale and Simon Despres autos to last me a lifetime.

What I gave up was a high-end rookie card autographed by a guy who went pointless in two NHL games last year before picking up two goals in 11 games this year, for a medium-end autographed jersey card of a guy who picked up 81 points (40 goals, 41 assists) in 80 games last season, and currently is sitting at 10th in the league with 18 goals.

I'd call this one another victory.