Claims, Greed, Confessions, and a Prize

It wasn't that long ago that you couldn't go a single week without seeing a 'free stuff' post, heck, it wasn't even that long ago that you couldn't go a single day without seeing a 'free stuff' post (I'm looking at you, Rod!). Fast forward a few months, and now you're lucky if you see one a month. For the record though, I'm not doing them, but don't see myself doing another one before the end of the year. As for everyone else, who knows, the thrill may truly be gone, or perhaps it's just gone dormant for a spell. Either way, it was fun while it lasted.

Brian, from Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary, was on board with the free stuff trend right from the beginning, running weekly giveaways for many consecutive months. In some ways, a person of his standing getting in on the action so early, gave the thing a certain air of legitimacy that it might not have attained otherwise

Despite the many great cards that were offered by Brian for all of those weeks, I didn't really claim a whole lot from him, if only because a lot of them just didn't fit my collection. I did claim the Catfish Hunter insert one week, and when it eventually showed up, I found that it had acquired a couple of stowaways.

Hmm, "I didn't really claim a whole lot from him"? That's a bit of a lie. Well, it wouldn't be if I were to leave out the items that I got from his final free stuff post, as I had only claimed a few cards going into that post, but then I got greedy...

I arrived to Brian's last giveaway post late (as per usual), only to find that he was doing a special final giveaway edition, which was loaded with neat things, including a bunch of Juniors. Some had already been gotten, so I just asked to have whatever was remaining. Was that being greedy? Oh, and before you answer that, you should probably know that Junior wasn't the only player from that post that I claimed the rest of...

There was a bunch of Barry Sanders' too.

So, now that you have the whole picture, how about it, greedy? I'm leaning towards yay on this one, but what's done is done. Nobody's perfect, least of all me. I'm still happy with the cards no matter what you think!

Many thanks to Brian for indulging my deadly sin, and for his hopping on board the free stuff train somewhere between the first and second stop, his enthusiasm for the idea kept it on the tracks longer than I thought it would have (I don't why I'm trying to make train metaphors all of sudden, I'll stop now).

Hopefully you weren't thinking that that was the end of the post, I've still got much more content to come, but first I need to make a confession (or two).

This is tough, but here it goes: In my early days as a blogger/blog reader, I didn't always participate in people's accomplishments like I should have. And when I say accomplishments, I mean folks that have reached X amount of posts, or X amount of years as a blogger. Part of this was due to not knowing everyone yet, or rather knowing of everyone yet. Another part of it was that it took me a while to feel like I belonged enough to comment a lot, especially on celebratory posts that full of comments from longtime friends and readers. There's probably another part or two to my not commenting a lot early on, but can no longer remember what they might've been. The point is, I didn't comment a lot way back when, but have made an effort to do much more in recent years. I'm not gonna say that I'm anywhere near Fuji level when it comes to commenting, but I'd like to think that I leave my fair share. It took a few years to realize just how important comments are to blogs, more specifically, to those writing the posts. View counts can be (and often are) misleading thanks to bot activity, but comments aren't. Sometimes they're the only way for a blogger to gauge just how many real people are reading, and how engaged they are with what you're writing. This isn't always an easy pill to swallow, especially when your blog is ostensibly a sports card blog, but you cover many non sports cards related things (I'm speaking of no one in particular of course 😉).

And I know that I'm not the only one who'll occasionally click on a post, see that it's going to be a long one, and decide to come back later to read it, so I don't consider that to be a confession, however...

I have clicked on what turns out to be a long post, decided to come back later, and then forgot to come back later. It hasn't happened very often, mind you, but still, it has happened -- even once on a milestone post. Because of my goldfish brain, and because it's happened before, I now (well, for the last few years), at least when it's late at night, will leave a celebratory comment on any milestone post I see, even if I haven't read the whole post yet. If it's late, and the post is long, I'll come back later and catch up on what I missed, but just in case I forget to do so, I'll at least have a comment acknowledging the achievement already in place. That one's more of a peek behind the curtains than a confession, BUT, I do have one more real confession for you to chew on...

One night, right before starting to get ready for bed, many months ago, I did one last perusal of the blogroll for the day, and noticed that, Brian (still of HSACA), was celebrating his 1,000th post. And again, it was late (for me), I was tired, and it looked like it was going to be a longer post, so I decided to come back later -- but just in case, before leaving, I scrolled down, and left what I hoped would be a nice celebratory comment. That's not so bad is it? I didn't think so either, certainly nothing that shocking or worth confessing...

I don't recall how long afterwards it was, I'll just guess and say that it was two months later, a bubble mailer showed up from Brian. He hadn't said anything, so this was certainly out of the blue, and highly irregular if you will.

Inside was a well-loved repack box, full of cards no less, and a Steve Young insert of some sort. There was also a note, which mentioned that this was my prize for commenting on his 1,000th post all those months ago. Prize? I read that post, there was no mention of prizes... or was there?

I went back and looked for the post, found it, and after reading it, realized that it had happened again, I commented on it (like I said I did), but had forgotten to go back and read it the next day! I also found out what all of this prize business was about too, apparently the first 8 people to comment were going to get a prize, and you know what number the comment I left that night just in case I forgot to come back later was? That's right, #8! I had, and still have, mixed feelings about this. On one hand, prizes are usually fun, and I'm usually happy to win them if I've entered some sort of contest to do so. And on the other hand, which just so happens to be the larger of the two hands btw, I shouldn't have gotten a prize for leaving a quick 'just in case' comment (which also had a typo in it too) that night. I mean technically I did go back and read the post, albeit many months later, but still, somebody participating that first night should've gotten that eighth spot. 

I haven't done so yet, but I will be making it up to Brian at some point, and whatever it is will be good. So, now that I've cleared my conscious (not really, but it sounds good), let's delve into this prize that I didn't deserve:

You already saw the card in the toploader, but there was another Steve Young (technically there were two more, but you'll have to wait a minute to see the other) in the back of the box, a modern SPx, that scanned really weird. And I had no idea that Upper Deck had even done a modern SPx set, obviously they don't have the NFL license, so they had use older college era photos for their set, but they still look really good. I got all of my Steve Young's entered into the TCDB a few weeks ago, and found that these had been my first cards to feature him as a Cougar.

I noticed fairly quickly that this repack seemed curiously tailored to my collecting interests, almost like it wasn't just bought off the shelf and sent to me :)

I'm not too keen on these numbers sets, they feel very lazy to me. I'd never buy any of them on my own, even from the Ichiro set, but will add them to the binder if they come my way.

I've talked about this card, or rather the image, many times on the blog already, so I'll spare you another round of biased admiration. I will say though that I have many different versions of this card, and many copies of some of those versions, but this was my first Opening Day blue.

I don't care what anyone thinks about the DH position, I was glad to see Edgar make it to Cooperstown, no matter how he had to do it.

I only have a couple of the Showdown cards, but every time I get a new one, part of me wants to try the game just a little bit more than the previous time. One of these days I might even go read how it was played, and I'm really curious what kind of flow it had, as not all card games were created equal in that regard.

Are you noticing anything about this box yet? Maybe the Seattle-centricness of it?

I don't do sports what if's very often, but I do sometimes wonder how many more accolades Felix would've earned had he played for just about anybody other than Seattle? So many pitches thrown, for so little reward. It's kind of sad in a way, but also not really, because he did make more money than 99% of us could ever fathom making, so I think he'll be okay.

This scan would've looked a lot better had the cards been in chronological order.

There were many more cards of the above three guys in the box, but I think you get the idea, it was a good 'repack', and the box isn't even done giving yet...

I lucked out and got one of those 1:4 hits, and it wasn't some crappy autographed sticker of a player that no one's ever heard of before.

And as for the advertised pack, well, I lucked out there too...

There must've been some sort of mistake at the factory, because as you can clearly see, I got two packs instead of one, and neither were of the Triple Play variety 😲.

The only negative thing about this box to report would be that, is that the X-Files cards were bricked, and not just pull apart with snow bricked, no, these were full on Krazy-Glue bricked. I could tell that they were going to be before opening the pack, but had to try anyways. I had a picture showing the extensiveness of the bricking, but apparently I accidently deleted it at some point. It would've been to open, but the thought behind the pack still counts. The Bowman on the other hand, was perfectly fine. I've got it all scanned up, and will show the contents in a future post (sometime in January).

A thousand thanks to Brian for the prize, and all of the effort that clearly went into it. I didn't deserve it, but it was still greatly appreciated.

Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.