Christmas post

 Over the past few days I’ve gotten a few surprise packages, along with 1 or 2 I was expecting, as well as some Christmas presents that I wasn’t really expecting to get that have bolstered my collection. Let’s take a look. 

Kevin from The Diamond King had a giveaway recently and I claimed the cool die cut Chris Sale card. Kevin was nice enough to send 3 numbered cards along for the ride with the Sale, a really cool Purple Optic parallel of Blake Snell, a parallel of Al Kaline from this years Absolute Memorabilia set, and a numbered insert of Scott Kazmir from 2005 Studio. Back in the day, I would’ve had a really good chance at pulling the Kazmir, as I got at least 10 packs of ‘05 Studio and seemed to pull low numbered inserts like the Kazmir in just about every pack. 

Dime Box Nick also had a giveaway recently as part of his blogging anniversary, and I had my eye on the Randy Arozarena highlight SP from this years Archives set, and the Eric Thames card from the 2017 Topps Heritage set. Along with those, Nick included the beautiful Robert Campos purple refractor from this years Bowman set, a baseball magazine Trammell, a Topps Archives Al Kaline, a 1958 Topps of Harvey Kuenn, my first Allen & Ginter card of this year with Shane Baz, the McClanahan All-Star, a Vidal Brujan Chrome insert from 2022 Topps, Randy’s 2022 Archives base card, and a sweet Fearless Prism Casey Mize insert. The Kuenn and the Mize made me speechless for a little bit. 

Along the unexpected front, I got this card in an envelope from Gavin of Baseball Card Breakdown. I really wasn’t expecting anything from him, and this card has me stumped for a while. I figured it was a box bottom for while. Then I looked and found Trammell didn’t have one. I searched online for ‘white 1991 Fleer’ and couldn’t find anything. Then I remembered that Gavin experimented with putting a card in direct sunlight and seeing the changes before and I figured that’s what the Trammell card was. Had I actually read the note tucked into the sleeve instead of only reading the first one, I would’ve realized this a lot sooner. What a cool card and a nice holiday surprise. Definitely looks better than the standard yellow. Thanks to Kevin, Nick, and Gavin for the nice holiday packages. I’ll have to see what I can do around the holiday season in 2023. 

Close to a month ago, I got a value box of 2022 Topps Chrome and tried emailing the receipt to Topps to get entered into the retail drawing for what I thought was a silver pack of Chrome cards from that set. I was under the assumption that the drawing fro December purchases was closer to the end of the year, so I kind of forgot about it. A few days ago, I got an envelope from Topps/Fanatics. My guess was that it was maybe a ToppsNow end of the year card for winning a HR Challenge earlier in the year. I opened the package, and it was only 1 card, a 2022 Topps Chrome Spencer Torkelson refractor. I don’t know if I got that in place of the silver pack or just as a consolation prize, but either way, I was stoked!  I don’t know if the sellers were out of touch, but I found 2 listed on eBay for 100-200 bucks. I was just happy for the card to be a Tiger!  

Then at Christmas I didn’t get any cards on the 25th as we only did presents at my house with Kyler and Karens mom and we only got Kyler stuff. I kind of figured I wouldn’t get any cards for Christmas, and that was fine. We ended up going down to Lakeland to see my Mom and stepdad, and then going up to Davenport on the way back to DeLand to visit my youngest sister and her husband. We told everyone to just get Kyler stuff, but my mom ended up getting me 2 packs of Series 2, and I got a few inserts that I didn’t have. My brother in law ended up getting me a Series 1 pack, and I pulled an orange sparkle Luis Robert card. He also went through some loose cards that he had access to (they had just moved and his cards weren’t really where he could get to them), and gave me a few doubles (including a 2006 Bowman Chrome Alex Gordon rookie), and gave Kyler 3 packs of 1988 Leaf from a box. He had a box of ‘88 Leaf from his old LCS in Jacksonville, and I would’ve loved to open that as my ratio of Donruss to Leaf cards is about 50/1. Ky pulled a Rickey Henderson, 2 Will Clark’s, an Alan Trammell, and a Paul Molitor. Not too bad. On top of all of that, I got to stop at my favorite Chinese place before leaving to pick up a pound of my favorite bourbon chicken and General Lee chicken, and got to take home half of my moms famous cheesecake. I swear, that cheesecake has made me the talk of many girls in Montgomery, Alabama. I made it for a few of them for Christmas parties and stuff, and one girl after eating it wanted to hold my hand for 30 seconds each time she saw me after that (2 regular tubs of whip crème, 2 packs of cream cheese, and 1/2 cup of sugar, mix together with a mixer, and add cherries on top if you prefer, and that’s basically the recipe). 

Sorry I didn’t take pictures past the 3 blogger packages, it’s just been crazy. I still want to add some cards to TCDB, but haven’t had the chance to since the last post, but perhaps next Tuesday on my next day off, I’ll be able to do so. I’ve added 2 more complete sets (1994 and 1995 Topps), and missed out on some decent priced ones that sold (1997 and 1999 Topps). I should’ve just pulled the trigger, but I’m hoping to find a few sets under 40 bucks plus shipping and we’ll see if I can add the ‘97-‘99 sets and just trade for the missing cards from ‘86-‘93. Another reason to get them cards logged in so I can create a master missing card list. 

Not sure when I should organize some of these binders, but it might be a good idea for me to wait until everything is logged in and I might just leave spaces in my binders for some of the sets that are really close to being finished. 

That’s about it. I had a great Christmas and hope you have a s well. Thanks for checking out my latest post. 

-Jeremy