If You Caught It, It Was Never a "White Whale" to Begin With, Right?

sempie Ekim 08, 2022

In my experience whenever the subject of a literary classic comes up in conversation there's almost always a reference to high school or college: "I had to read that in high school" or " I read that in college. Often it's, "I never had to read that." Perhaps it's more a reflection of my intellectual shortcomings than the the talent of the teachers I had but I didn't really enjoy most the books I read in school. One of the classics "I never had to read" is Herman Melville's, Moby Dick.

So what pray tell does this have to with cards? This--I've always thought, in collecting terms, of the phrase "White Whale" as something that you're always hunting for and can never seem to acquire. And I guess in reference to Moby Dick that's true enough. But what if you finally do get what you've been searching for? Wouldn't it be true that by definition it was never a "White Whale" to begin with?

Here's a card that I thought was a "White Whale". Happily it wasn't. It did take me years of sporadic looking and lost bids to finally add this to my collection. While not the priciest card I've ever bought it's the most I've spent on a single item in years.