A rainbow of (Kin)dness

As mentioned in the previous post, I was fortunate enough to receive a number of very generous packages during the month of December, and I am very overdue in giving public thanks. Now that I'm caught up with a few things, blog and life related, I can now start getting everything shown.

Some of these packages that will be shown over the next couple of posts will probably be out of order, as far as when they were received, but I scanned everything in a certain order, so that's the order in which they will be shown -- I say "certain order", but that really just translates to "completely random", I mention this because I don't want anyone to think I'm doing a worst to best, or vice-versa, I could never do such a thing when it comes to items that multiple people took the time (and money) to send to me.

Okay, so first up is, Kin, of many things fame! Seriously though, you can find Kin all over the place, on Twitter, on YouTube, and of course, there's always Bean's Ballcard Blog.

You often hear people on the blogs, and on Twitter, mention that this person, and that person, are great ambassadors for the card collecting community, or "The Hobby". Well, in my mind, there are few people who are more influential in this community than Kin. He rarely gets the accolades for all that he does, and has done, which is a real shame, because he has done an awful lot -- and being the humble person that he is, he isn't one to go around telling people of all the things he's done, heck, he won't even admit to being as important as he is on the rare occasion that someone does acknowledge him (I know, I've tried).

I won't go into everything that I've seen him do, or heard other people mention him doing, but I will say that one of the most important things that he does, is to tweet (and retweet) out links to people's blog posts. Now I realize that this might not seem like a big deal to some, but trust me, it is! Kin's got incredible pull, so when he tweets out a link to a post, he puts eyes on that post, I've experienced this many times, so I know what I'm talking about here. And for any blogger who is not on Twitter that might be wondering how this applies to them, well, it doesn't matter if you're on Twitter or not, if you have a blog, Kin is probably tweeting out links to your posts and you don't even know it... and those tweets are most certainly increasing the number of views on those posts!

Now that I've paid proper respects to the house of Kin, let's take a look at what he sent me :)

Kin sent most of these Topps parallels not knowing whether I would like them or not, even mentioning that he hoped I could find good homes for any of the one's that I didn't want. A few of them I don't about yet, but I can tell you (and Kin) that I absolutely love the Todd Helton, he has two cards in the 2014 set, but I think this one would technically be his sunset card. I have two copies of this Red Foil now, and if I ever come across any more cheap copies, I'll probably get those too!

As far as the cards at the top of the page go, that Zimmerman is now my first card of him, and the Braun is like the second or third of his that I now own, not a fan of his, but he is a name, so he was added to a binder. While looking at the Braun card, I couldn't help but wonder if he would ever be able to play anywhere other than Milwaukee? I've made it no secret that I don't follow a lot of modern sports anymore, for the most part I just read Rotoworld in the morning to see who did what the day before. It seems like his numbers are still pretty good, but I haven't heard anything about where he currently stands with baseball fans in general, is he still loathed? Would fans in another city accept him, especially if they thought he could help their team win? Anyone?

I know I've said it on multiple occasions, but I just can't seem to get over how different, and how awesome, these cognac's look when scanned -- as for Tony Sipp, I had never heard of him before, but according to the back of this card, he was born 360 days after me... interesting?

Will you look at that? My first 2013 Topps blue sparkle, or as COMC refers to it, my first 2013 Topps Wrapper Redemption Blue Slate. I've seen these on the blogs before, but have never seen one in person, and let me tell you, no matter what you call them, they are pretty! Having never opened any 2013 Topps, I don't really know what the wrapper redemption thing is all about, but at this point I don't really care either, I just know that it looks great amongst the couple of pages of Indians cards that I have in my newly created team binders.

A couple of months ago, Kin was selling a bunch of stuff on Twitter, I saw this 2016 Donruss Elite green parallel amongst said stuff, and knew that I had to have it (just look at those contrasting colors!). I asked kin if he would be interested in trading it if no one else ended up buying it, he responded by saying that I could have it, and a trade wouldn't be necessary! When I first the picture of this card, I thought that part of it was acetate, but it isn't, you can really tell that from the scan. I'm a big fan of acetate, but this was one instance where I was kind of glad to learn that it was just solid piece of cardboard, a very shiny piece of cardboard.

Thank you again for the cards, Kin! And thank you again for all that you do for everyone else, especially when it comes to your fellow bloggers.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.