Secret Santa haul

I apologize that this has taken so long to post my Secret Santa haul from Bad Wax’s Secret Santa/Hanukkah Harry. I finally found a few minutes between changing poopy diapers to scan the cards and provide a quick write-up.

My Secret Santa was Cam from Cardboard Heaven. If you haven’t checked out his blog, do so. He definitely has one of the best blog headers out there. I’m envious of it and wish I had the Photoshop skills to create something as cool.

I gave a list of a few wish list cards, but I’m always happy with any and all Yankees. Cam didn’t disappoint. He sent a fantastic haul. Here are the highlights:

My favorite card is definitely this 2011 Eduardo Nunez Auto Refractor. The signature is on-card which is sweet. I’ve never been able to get Nunez TTM, so I really wanted a 2011 auto of his.

Next up, a framed mini relic of ARod. This is only my second ARod relic! Pretty sweet card. The A&G relics are always well done.

 Jesus! These Bowman Futures cards are really growing on me.

Liquorfractors!

And a big stack of Yanks that I was too lazy to scan. The stack was full of many of my favorite Yanks – Jeter, Mattingly, Yogi, DiMaggio. I can honestly say that none of the cards were dupes either!

Cam – thanks for the great Secret Santa gift!

Contest Winnings from $30 a Week Habit - Part 1

I don’t win blog contests often, but when I do they usually are really good ones. I was extremely lucky to win an awesome one from Robert at $30 A Week Habit. I missed his initial contest post, but found it in time to enter on the last day. Well, somehow random.org decided to pull my name as a winner once the contest closed. Robert sent me a great prize which I’ll highlight in two posts.

I’ll first show off the four singles that Robert sent me. He knows I collect Yankees, so he sent me the following:

This is awesome! I traded away my only other ’75 mini relic, so I was pumped to get a new one, and a Yankee to boot! These are some of my favorite cards of the year, and adding a CC relic to the collection is always great. I would have been happy if this card alone was my contest prize. But it wasn’t.

Two fantastic Thurman Munson parallels! One from Lineage, one Liquorfractor from Topps Update.

Lastly, a Babe Ruth refractor from the Topps value boxes. Sweet looking card.

In part two, I’ll show off the contents from these:

Uncommon (Card) contest winnings

A few weeks back, Tony from A Common (Card) Man held a contest. He pulled a black leather nameplate from a pack of 2011 Topps Update. All we had to do was guess who it was from the checklist. Well, no one guessed correctly, so then Tony random.org’d it off and somehow I came out on top. I never win these things, but I won two in one week. Weird! Anyways, I was pumped to win such an awesome card #’d to 99.

When the card arrived, I was surprised at how nice it was. The leather feels and smells real, and the black looks sharp. I have the Cano brown leather nameplate, and this will look great alongside it.

Tony and I had been working on a trade for this card, but he decided to include it in the prize as well. A Phil Rizzuto Liquorfractor. Scooter is one of my favorite Yanks of all, so this is a welcome treat.

That wasn’t the only Liquorfractor! This Cano is just amazing. He face is priceless. I now have this one and the regular Diamond shiny.

Oh, and Tony went above and beyond to find me a bunch of Tino’s I didn’t have! Always a welcome surprise! My favorite is the 1999 UD Choice Reserve that looks like an X-Fractor and is #'d 12/100. Of the eight Tino’s he sent, I didn’t have six! It’s amazing how many Tinos I still need, but this certainly helps.

Tony, thanks again for the great contest!

I traded Thorzul anything

I'm a dork and posting this at 11:11am. I bet I won't be the only one. I am writing this post on 11/8/11, as an FYI.

In Thorzul’s Trade Me Anything V promotion, I was able to claim two great Liquorfractors – a DJ3K and a David Robertson All Star. I sent him a stack of cards, a Robin Yount postcard, and the Ryan Braun painted sketch card.

I love the Jeter, even if it is just a checklist. It looks great with the Liquorfractor shininess, as does the Robertson. The green grass behinds him pops nicely.

Thanks for the deal, Thorzul!