Do you believe in Sandy Claws?

After two years worth of Secret Santa hosting now under my belt, I can tell you that there are exactly three things that I don't like about doing so: a) worrying that something is gonna go catastrophically wrong -- and then being blamed for it, b) trying to find out why someone hasn't gotten there package yet, and c) telling whoever drew my name that they have to buy me something.

That last one is more awkward than anything, but so far both people that I've had to tell this to have taken it in stride, for which I'm eternally grateful, as I don't do awkward well.

This year's uncomfortable email was sent to, Matt, from Diamond Jesters, who is someone that I hadn't had the good fortune to have had any real contact with yet, so as far as what to expect gift wise goes, I was completely clueless (this is one instance when being clueless is actually a good thing).

Christmas cards are always a good thing! Confession, I was in such a rush to send out the package to my giftee, that I forgot to include a Christmas card, sorry Jared :(

 Sandy Claws... AWESOME!

I'm pretty sure that Matt is just a baseball guy, so to get something that wasn't baseball related from him was kind of surprise, but to get something as seemingly hard to find as this 1986 McDonald's Reggie Roby from him was just like... whoa! I haven't looked into the details of this particular promotion yet, but I do know that it was a regional thing. They came in three four different colors (black, blue, gold, and green), which probably meant something, and as you can imagine, there aren't a ton of unscratched cards still around. There doesn't even seem to be a lot of cards without tabs around, so either they didn't make a lot of them (I doubt that), or just not very many people hung on to the cards after they were scratched. Coming in at roughly 3" x 4 3/4", I was a bit surprised at how big the card was, but I guess that's what happens when you've never seen one in person before, and haven't seen any measurements online either.

That card alone would've been enough for me, but there was more...

I can honestly say that unopened packs of anything are about the last thing that I would've expected to see come out of my SS package, but there they were... and they didn't stay unopened very long! Opening up new packs is not something that I get to do very often, so no matter what came out of them, it was gonna be fun either way.

These days collectors seem to be all about the "hits", so I'll start with the "hits". This card was in the pack backwards, so I was pretty sure that that meant something, but after looking at it for minute, I couldn't figure out what? The border was different from the others, and there wasn't any extra shiny bits, so I was left wondering... at least until I took to the webz! I'm sure that everyone who's looking at this can see what's so special about it, but just in case there's another me out there, his bat is a candy cane!!!!!! Apparently I haven't paid enough attention to the blog posts that I've seen with these, because I had no idea that I was suppose to be looking for things like that. I found out that this is an SP variation, and it falls at 1:7 packs.

It's hard to tell from the scan, but this one has the metallic snowflakes, which at 1:2 packs, are the most common of the parallels.

To me they're just "meh", but to a lot of other collectors these days, rookies are where it's at... so here's some rookies!

Got some guys that I'm familiar with...

... and some that I'm not!

Horizontal cards may not always look the best in pages, but they often allow for much better images. The universe must be trying to tell me that I need more Jorge Soler in my life, as I got him in both packs.

I'm seen some folks dismiss the holiday sets for being too "gimmicky", but they don't bother me in the least, as really anything other than a base card could be considered too "gimmicky", and there aren't too many people who only collect base cards anymore, so their complaints tend to sound like someone who's complaining just for complaining sake. I like the holly border on these BTW, I would've preferred it to be a full border, but they still look good as is.

Thanks for the fun Secret Santa package, Matt! I got to add an elusive card to the Reggie Roby collection, and I got the opportunity to open up some Christmas themed packs, seemed like a win-win in my book :)

Oh, and one final thing. Even though is post was about Matt's gift, I just wanted to publicly acknowledge the cards that I've received this month from Billy (Cardboard History), Chris (The Collector), Greg (The Collective Mind), Josh (Royals and Randoms), and Matt (Sport Card Collectors). This month got away from me, but I fully intend to post about each and every one of these packages in January, so until then, thanks again for all of the generous things that were sent my way.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.