Last winnings for Johnny’s yearlong contests

 The past year, John of Johnny’s Trading Spot has been doing a daily giveaway. Not just a giveaway where you have to do something difficult like guess something or where you even need to send cards back, but something anyone can do and comment on his post. I was lucky enough to win a number of times, and I know just about everyone who participated in them has won multiple times. The daily giveaway was a kind of innovative thing in my opinion, akin to something new a card company comes up with like the Topps HR Challenge or some of the fun ‘90’s card contests like ‘Crash the Game’, ‘Predictor’, ‘Bowman Guaranteed Value’, and ‘Topps  Super Teams’. I can’t imagine how many stamps he used. 

It’s just another thing that highlights how great of a guy John is. I’ve had the chance to meet up with him 3 times. The first time, at a show in Jacksonville, he taught me how to haggle and try for the best deal, and helped me haggle with a few dealers, netting me an autographed card of DeLand native Luke Weaver and an auto/jersey card of former Tiger prospect Christin Stewart. 

The next 2 times, I drove out to his place in Ocala, and he let me dig through his trade boxes and gave me a huge collector of ‘90’s cards which will definitely complete some sets once I finally get every card logged into TCDB. I can’t say enough about John’s generosity, and I hope I can be the same kind of guy when I trade, have interactions with other collectors, and just interact with anyone. 

Where are the last cards I won from the contest, you say?  Here you go. 

The first card is an early card from the Conlon Collection, I believe in 1988, which was a few years earlier than the sets everyone pictures in their minds. The Matt Boyd is a 2020 Ben Baller Chrome card. Daniel Norris is a Rainbow parallel from the 2021 Topps set, making it 3 or 4 I have from that set. 2 Matt Manning Optic cards from 2022 round out the card portion. The next 5 things in the sheet were Tigers pocket schedules. Ranging from 1989 to 2000. The 2000 one is actually from Comerica Park’s first year. We were lucky enough to see a game there in 2018, and it’s near the top of the list of ballparks I’ve been to. A cool final prize package. Thanks for doing these giveaways for a whole year and thanks for the fun final winnings package John. It has been fun and I hope it was a fun process for you. 

I’m was today and I was thinking about working on taking pics of my best card of the 2023 Rays, but with the 3 top tier starters going down for the year and the debacle of Wander Franco potentially being suspended for who knows how long, I just wasn’t in the mood. 2023 will go down as the biggest disappointment in Rays history. Yeah, they’ll probably make the playoffs, but at the beginning of the season, they looked like the team to beat in the AL and a real chance to win their first title. I see them getting a Wild Card, and losing before the ALCS. AL title winner will be whoever wins out of the Rangers and Astros. I really don’t see the Rays ever getting over the hump. Yeah, the pitching staff will be better next year, but with all of the emphasis on spin rate and max velocity, 1 or 2 guys will go down, and with an owner who won’t spend money on top tier free agents, we’re not going to get a power hitting RF or a decent bullpen, so we’re going to keep trotting Margot out in RF and sign stopgaps like Wacha, Archer,  and Kluber to fill out the rotation and pen, and it will get us to the playoffs but not a ring. I kind of want to follow the Tigers as my #1, but their GM seems like he’s just signing stopgaps as well. Illich’s son needs to spend like Daddy did. I almost hope the Rays move to wherever and Tampa gets an expansion team. If they can get an owner who will spend, Tampa might get their first championship. Rays/Tigers rant over, I spent the early part of the morning pulling the AL cards out of the binders that John gave me. I made good progress, just needing to finish 4 to 6 more and then all the AL cards will be ready to sort. I’ll probably juggle doing that and making the customs for my project for the next few month, as well as folding in whatever cards I acquire in that time period. 

Thanks for checking out my latest post. 

-Jeremy