Mailday Post: Too Many Verlanders Giveaway

A couple of weeks ago over at Too Many Verlanders, Dennis ran a contest which was based around him giving away a bunch of cards.  In other words, he gave away cards and those giveaways led to entries in a contest to get more cards.  

Never one to miss an opportunity to fill a gap or two in my collection, I claimed two different items -- the Prince Fielder collection, in the hopes of getting a couple of cards of him on the Brewers that I didn't have, and the 1999 Topps Series Two set.  Since 1999 was right in the middle of my non-collecting years, those cards had escaped me entirely.

Those items got me a total of five entries into Dennis's contest.  I was lucky enough to top off claiming those previous items with finished third in the contest giveaway.  My selection: I took a blaster of 2008 Upper Deck Series 1 and 2 off Dennis's hands as well.  

Last week, the box with all those cards showed up -- it must have had a total of 500 or 600 cards in it.  Here are the highlights.  

As I mentioned, I knew I was getting Prince Fielders -- most of which now are listed up in my team trade bait section under "Tigers."  Three of those cards, however, were Brewers:

I really like this MLB Artifacts card (pardon the screwy scanning I did there).  Yeah, we've gotten tons of nostalgia-type cards in the past 15 years, but that one is a classy looking card.  

The 1999 Topps Series 2 had several Brewers, of course, and all of these were needed either for my player collections or the team set:

I don't know why I'm surprised when I get a Marquis Grissom card with Milwaukee, but I always seem to forget that he played with the Brewers.

After going through those items I claimed, I then cracked open the blaster box of Upper Deck.  I've opened quite a few packs of the Upper Deck First Edition set in repack boxes, so the card design was familiar to me.  The glossy finish and the silver foil on these cards was not.  I know I sound like a fan boy and I know that a significant portion of collectors don't like the full-bleed photos on cards, but, well, I love the full-bleed photos on cards.  It makes them feel cooler and more expensive, I guess.  Anyway, here are the cards I got from the blaster that I really liked:

I even got a Prince Fielder "Infield Power" insert.  And I think I'm collecting all Carlos Gomez and Jean Segura cards at this point.  Lucroy's too, of course -- I mean, who wouldn't collect the best player in the National League (oh God, please don't let there be an SI website curse)?

Finally, I believe Dennis was using some football cards as filler simply to keep the other cards from moving around.  While I'm not exactly a football collector, I didn't mind getting college football cards for my Georgia Bulldogs!

The NCAA would have you believe that the number 8 here is just generic and has nothing to do with A.J. Green.  Nothing whatsoever.

Dennis, thanks for the cards, the giveaway, and even for the Georgia Bulldogs cards.  I'm starting to contemplate whether I should try to collect college football cards of the Dawgs at this point!