Topps Holiday Advent Calendar - Day 14

 Busy day today... shoveling snow, wrapping Christmas gifts... watching the Packers lose. I almost forgot my daily Topps Holiday baseball card pack. Here's number 14:

And the cards...

...are underwhelming:

Will tomorrow's pack be any more exciting? Possibly! 

Thanks for reading!

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Topps Holiday Advent Calendar - Day 13

 The second half of the Topps Holiday Advent Calendar opens tonight. Time to open door number 13 (shout out Olivia Wilde)

We start off side B with another standard 5-card pack:

and the usual configuration, three base / one Plaid parallel / one Nice List insert:

Another Red Sox base card for the PC, and a third straight Tiger card. The brilliant Boston braintrust traded away a Cy Young award winner in Sale for Vaughn Grisson - who they just traded away. The Crochet trade was supposed to make up for that, and yet the Sox are trying to reacquire the prospect they sent to Chicago in that trade?!? Oh, and they seem to be doing feck all in free agency this year. Yay.

Pack #14 tomorrow. Can the Sox make it three in a row? Can the Tigers make it four straight? 

Thanks for reading!




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Topps Holiday Advent Calendar - Day 12

And just like that, we're halfway through the Topps Holiday Advent calendar. I have to give Fanatics the smallest amount of credit - they did make it more convenient by putting all the first twelve doors on the left side of the box (although that might have been due to their own laziness, not convenience for the customer.) 

Pack #12 has been procured, and it's ... 

....

a standard 5-card pack. Let's close out the first half with something special...

A Marcelo Mayer Plaid parallel works for me! Two Brewers and a Corbin Carroll insert are less than exciting. 

Here's the first half tally:

3 Evergreen inserts (Soto, Banks, Crews)
1 buyback (Anthony Rizzo 2024 Update)
10 Nice List inserts (Judge, Skenes, Duran, Rogers, Witt, Helsley, Judge, Henderson, Ohtani, Carroll)
10 Green Plaid parallels (Kikuchi, Josh Smith, Abel, Quero, Fried, Dezenzo, Perdomo, Rushing, S. Perez, Mayer)
30 base Holiday cards (including 6 rookies)

I won't come close to completing the 200-card base set, so I'll probably send some in care packages after Christmas and trade the rest on TCDB.

Will lucky #13 yield something special, or will it be another base pack? We'll find out tomorrow :)

Thanks for reading!




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Topps Holiday Advent Calendar - Day 11

Time to open another door in the Topps Holiday Advent calendar. It's day number Eleven - shout out Millie Bobby Brown.

My 13 year old daughter has been hearing her classmates talk about Stranger Things and wanted to catch up on the series before the finale drops, since she was too young to watch the first four seasons. We've made it to season two so far. I think we can catch up by Christmas. 

Naturally, Eleven is her favorite character.

Before I reveal the five-card pack of baseball cards in the advent calendar, I have a story to share.

Today was the company Holiday party, held at a fancy hotel/banquet hall in Manhattan. 

As we entered the ballroom, the wait staff were assembling the food stations. This immediately caught my eye:

Despite this being my third year with the company, it was the first office function I attended. I had an uncanny ability to avoid them until this year, but my co-workers were so generous and supportive after D's passing that I vowed to actually participate this time. Plus, my excuse for missing this was gone. 

Once everyone found our seats, my boss introduced me to everyone at the table and offered to introduce me to anyone else I wanted to meet, as the NYC staff is 4x larger than our group in NJ. I am very socially awkward, so I did not take him up on this offer. Though I must admit there were a couple lovely ladies that caught my eye, and I humored myself with the thought of asking Bossman to wingman me. 

But no.. I am not ready for that. Definitely shouldn't try to shake off 25 years of rust at an office party. 

Unrelated, I did at one point notice a very tall blonde woman sitting by the bar. I'm not familiar with the NYC staff as I've rarely interacted with them, but she definitely did not look familiar. And that's because she was our guest speaker. 

Our CFO Sam is all about corporate slogans; "building a championship team" is a big one. And to instill that mindset in us plebs, he introduced Maren Walseth - a motivational speaker and college basketball announcer who played four years at Penn State and coached at North Dakota State (not mentioned, but I'm sports obsessed so I looked it up - she played two years in the WNBA.) 

Maren gave a 20-30 minute speech about how we can all be an MVP, and how to approach each day with a mindset that sets us up for success. I roll my eyes at corporate motivational jargon but I am always enthralled by sports stories, particularly how she was able to win over a locker room as a rookie head coach and how she managed a group of 15 players who were all used to being the stars of their high school teams. One way she did this was by referring to her role players as "game changers". 

Also, when she began her list of what makes an MVP she said Pat McAfee could give you his opinion on what the greats have in common, but "I'm not interested in what Pat McAfee has to say." Hell yeah!

Anywho, at the conclusion of her speech, Maren mentioned that she'd hang around to take questions or chit-chat with anyone. I ran into her at the candy bar and wanted to say that I enjoyed the speech and whatnot.. but instead I apologized for walking in front of her because I am a goober. 

To reinforce that point, on my way back from retrieving an official OS Holiday Event sweatshirt and a bag of candy for the girls I ran into a sales rep I'd only met through email. He introduced himself and started to pull me in for that bro hug thing, but my hands were full.. so I ended up shoving the candy in my pocket and giving him an awkward one-handed pat on the back. Do you see now why I avoid these things? 

And you wanted Bossman to be your wingman? Bruhhh

One cool thing did happen while we were playing Wheel of Fortune. My table was struggling with a Same Name puzzle, and could only figure out 'Karaoke And _____ Bar.' 

Noticing the bag of candy I'd procured from the candy bar I told my team "try Candy Bar" .. they did, and we won. "Chris has to be on our team every year" one of them declared. So that felt good. 

Anyway, it was an enjoyable day all around. I was very tired when I came home (and my latest Consignment with 4 Sharp Corners ended tonight) so this took a lot longer than normal.

Here's today's standard 5-card pack from Topps Holiday:

First Ohtani card so far. I'll probably set that aside for Night Owl. 

Dennis, does the Jack Flaherty interest you at all?

Shorter post tomorrow. Probably ;-)

Thanks for reading!


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Topps Holiday Advent Calendar - Day 10

Time for another Topps Holiday Advent Calendar reveal. It's day number ten - shout out Pearl Jam.

As you probably know, Pearl Jam were originally named after NBA star Mookie Blaylock - who wore number ten. 

"When we were recording our first record, we had a per diem of about $10. So when we got lunch at the store across the street, we'd always buy a pack of basketball cards. When we turned in our tape, we didn't have a name for the band yet so we put a Mookie Blaylock card in the case. We were about to go on a tour and still didn't have a name and needed one quickly. We were told it didn't need to be the name that we were going to use forever, just something for the tour. Someone saw the Mookie Blaylock card and said, ‘How about Mookie Blaylock?' We decided to go with it and did a 10-show tour with Alice in Chains as Mookie Blaylock. Mookie was cool about it, too—he didn't sue us. I actually got to meet him later on and shoot around a little bit. We also made a Pearl Jam T-shirt with a picture of him on it. I guess we owe Mookie a lot." -- Jeff Ament

I'd always wondered why the Seattle-based band chose him instead of Sonics point guard Gary Payton.

No basketball cards in this post but here's the tenth door of the Topps Baseball Advent Calendar:

It's another standard 5-card pack. Cue the Nice List insert, the Plaid parallel, and the rookie card:

Night Owl, are you in need of any Holiday Dodgers?

I'm traveling to NYC tomorrow for my office's holiday party but I should be back in time to post pack #11. 

Thanks for reading!

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