Roberto Luongo Jersey Card

Gotta love Pacific's craze for jersey cards in the first half of the 00s. It saturated the market with game-used collectibles and brought the price of many previously-rare items to an affordable low... until Upper Deck lost patience and struck back-room deals with the NHL and NHLPA for exclusive rights to NHL merchandise.

Still. This beautiful black patch of the Florida Panthers' third jersey (despite the card depicting Roberto Luongo in the team's white jersey) can often be had for around $10 on Ebay, despite its 'value' nearing $35. It's from the eponymous 2004-05 Pacific set (#16 in the Authentic Game-Worn Jerseys sub-set) and is numbered 424/850, a relatively high number for a limited edition.

It's the second Luongo jersey card I've featured here, the first one was when he took over for Martin Brodeur as Team Canada's goalie during the last Olympics. I still have a few more left, so hopefully he keeps making the news so I have reasons to feature him. And he'd better hope it's more positive news than what we've been hearing all summer, which is that his current team, the Vancouver Canucks, are thinking of revoking his captaincy. It seems Montréal isn't the only place where goalie talks occupy summer's dead hockey space.