Happy First Contact Day! ... or IS it?

These annual celebrations of First Contact Day on April 4 each year may finally start amounting to something, as we reach the T-minus 50 years and counting mark next year in the march toward 2063, harnessing warp power and meeting the Vulcans.

At least it will amount to some cool T-shirts, bumper stickers and keychains over the "reverse" golden anniversary of 2013.

Or..... is it, really? Forget 1947 or even the late 1950s.

Insidious as it may sound, documents have been unearthed that point not to 2063, but the far more distant 1996 as the actual date of the first first contact—April 23, to be exact.

I present THE SMOKING GUN!

Dr. Selar's Vulcan ears! More Suzie eBay coolness

I swear, Dr. Selar may be the biggest cult Vulcan in all Star Trek.

I know she was way too cool for the rest of TNG's still-wobbly second season. She was so underused in "The Schizoid Man," and then never seen again—a terrible waste of a svelte, sexily cool, typically detached Vulcan, but female! I was so impressed when she first graced the screen—Whoa! Finally using Vulcans! What a well-done, TOS vibe!

The rest of the writers knew it, too; Ron Moore and the rest typically had Dr. Selar mentioned or paged a half-dozen more times; she was in a line cut from "All Good Things..." at the very end, and even got written into the New Frontier novels as a regular. Well, at least the amazing Suzie Plakson, under those ears, got to return with Klingon headbumps as K'Ehleyr and... oh wait. We know how that ended, too.

Well, now look what's come out of the closet: those eartips are on eBay through Sunday evening the 17th, the third item from Suzie's Trek years she's put out for fans. Again, with the Selar ears comes a signed letter from Suzie about her feelings about Selar, on-set and now. And what's more iconic from Star Trek than Vulcan ears?

Maybe you can't ever hope to bid for a pair of Leonard's Spock ears—from any timeline. Or even some of Tim's, or Jolene's, if they are even out there to be had. But what better Vulcan to grab a piece of than Suzie's Selar? You can believe these ears.

And no—no kickbacks are headed my way, thank you.