Flash Freebie #3

Hey, welcome to the second Flash Freebies in three days. Either I'm feeling extra generous this week, or I've gotta go to the post office in the next few days, and want to make the trip count. Spoiler, it's the latter! Plus, I'm stuck on a long post for the other blog right now, and figured that I might as well post some stuff over here (real post coming Saturday) while trying to work through my non cold item induced brain freeze.

No stipulations for today's card, and as a quick reminder, Johnny, won last time, so he'll have to sit this one out (he'll be eligible for the next one though).

Here's tonight's "prize":

This 1954 Topps Dick Kokos (#106) is just a tad off-center, but other than that, is in pretty good condition -- no creases or back problems. Wanna win him? If you answered yes, just be the first person to correctly tell me (down in the comments section) how many bases Dick stole in 1950? And he's all yours!

*This'll be another late one, so I won't be confirming the winner (provided that anyone was interested, of course) until I get up in the morning.

Flash Freebie #2

I hadn't intended to go so long without doing another one of these, but then again, I hadn't planned on stepping away from the blog for a couple of months either, so...

Since I'm sure that there's more than a few people out there who didn't see the first one back however many months ago it was, or who did, but have simply forgotten, I thought a quick what's what might be in order.

The idea itself is pretty simple, each post contains a card (one that I hope will be considered to be worthy of this kind of giveaway) that's up for grabs, and to get it, all you have to do is be the first to correctly answer a question (one that will usually be easy enough to find via an internet search) about the player, or the card itself. Oh, and these posts aren't scheduled for any particular time or day, so they could pop up at any time, hence the "Flash".

The only rule, so to speak, is that in order to make sure that the same person doesn't win every time, the winner of the previous freebie has to sit out during the current giveaway, but will be eligible again for the next one. So, for example, Brendan, won the first giveaway, and therefor won't be eligible for this one, but will be able to try his hand at the next one. 

There may be a stipulation added from time to time, but that'll only be for the "better" cards, and won't likely be applicable often enough to discuss right now.

Now that that's out of the way, here's today's giveaway:

This 1955 Topps Jake Thies (#12) is in fairly good condition, with no creases, or problems with the back. So, if this card is of any interest to you, and you want to win it, all you gotta do is be the first person to correctly tell me (down in the comment section): How many HRs did Jake give up in 1954?

*This post will probably be going live right around the time I go to bed, so if there is a winner, I won't be confirming it until tomorrow morning.

Flash Freebie #1

As promised last week, here's your first installment of what I'm hoping will become a regular, albeit random, feature here on the blog: Flash Freebie!

I did decide to create one rule since posting the teaser, that being that if you win one, you're ineligible for the next one. This'll hopefully give more than one person a chance to win things. So if you win today, you'll have to sit out #2, but will be eligible again for #3 whenever it shows up. 

Also, I decided that since I'm giving something away, the least I can do is to force people to have to click on the post to see what's being given away, hence the Flash logo for a header, and all of these words being typed before showing the card that's being given away; this'll conceal what's being given away just by perusing the first couple of lines when viewing their reading list. Future giveaways will probably feature about 600 letters worth of gibberish at the beginning of each one to accomplish this same goal.

I don't feel like adding all of this up, but it looks like there's enough there to mask what's being given away this week, so here's the first giveaway:

I'm not sure how much interest this 1954 Bowman Toby Atwell (#123) will generate, but it's somewhat old, and in really solid shape, so I guess we'll see. 

Toby broke into the bigs in 1952, so if you are interested in winning this card, all you have to do is be the fist to tell me: How many triples did he hit during his rookie year?

I'll do my best to confirm the winner as soon as the right answer comes in, provided there are any interested parties of course.

Coming soon

I really enjoy giving stuff away. It's probably my favorite thing to do with/through the blog. Trying to come up with clever ways to do so isn't always easy though, I mean I've got plenty of ideas, but figuring out how to implement most of those ideas has proven to be another matter altogether. The majority of them seem to be beyond my current mental capacity. Free Stuff Friday was a simple idea, and worked really well too, but I'm a bit burned out on it -- packaging up things for upwards of twenty people is lot of work! I haven't given up on my baby yet, but going forward will probably only bring it back for special occasions.

All that being said, I think I may have come up with another easy way to put free things into the hands of people who actually want said things. I'm not entirely sold on the name yet, but for the moment I'm calling it "Flash Freebie". The idea is basically to just put up a card (it may expand beyond cards depending on how this goes over) - a card that people will actually want, and that's worth using a stamp on - with a trivia question underneath it, and the first person to correctly answer it, gets the card. The question may pertain to the card, the player, or be completely random. And for those who don't think that they're good at trivia, the answers to these questions will all be easily findable via the interwebz. Some may wonder what the point of the questions is then, my reply being that I'd like people to have to do more than just scroll down to the comments and say "TAKE!!!!!!".

The plan is to do these at very random times of the day, hence the "Flash". So one might pop up at 5pm on a Monday, and two weeks later another could drop at 3am on a Thursday (I guess I'll have to finally figure out how to use the scheduling feature). I'm hoping that the randomness in times will add to the fun, though I can see how some might become annoyed by it.

There may be a few catches from time to time, like if it's something that I deem to be pretty good, I might say that only people who have commented on a post in the last 30 days are eligible for that particular card, or some other similar stipulation. Such qualifiers will be printed in red, so that they'll be easily noticed. The only other rule will be that your answer has to be in your first comment. So no saying "TAKE!!!", and then coming back a minute or two later to reply to that with your answer. I suppose I might have to make it so the same person can't win every time too, but I'll see how it goes before making any such stipulation.

I would imagine the interest will vary from freebie to freebie, depending on what's being given away, but as already mentioned, I will try to make sure that it's something people would want, multiple people would be ideal, but everyone has different tastes, so that might not always be very easy to arrange.

Oh, and even though these will be occurring at random intervals, I'll give you a small hint regarding the very first one... it'll be happening some time next week :)