Thanksgiving and Birthday Gifts

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving break and was able to enjoy good times with family and friends. 

Am thankful for so much and grateful to have great friends that I have made in just over the past year of starting this blog.  Thankful for having two great kids and an amazing wife, along with grateful for having a great challenging new job that I just started this summer. It has been quite busy and challenging at times but am grateful to have a good job and the opportunity to work with some great people.

As happens every so often my birthday fell one day after Thanksgiving so that means a nice gift of cards from my family. This year was fortunate to get a retail box of 2024 A&G and two hanger packs of 2022 Diamond Kings. Had been seeing a lot of A&G online so was happy to get some to open today.

Enjoyed the gifts, but the most valuable present for me will be enjoying a nice dinner out tonight with my two boys. I’m getting older, they’re getting older so those moments together are really the most valuable gift that I can get these days!

The A&G cards were actually pretty good, the Diamond Kings are probably telling why they had a “new low price”! Had a good mix of variety in A&G. Not quite sure who the relic actor is, but he was on MTV’s Road Rules reality shows. Probably would have like a nice relic of a baseball player, but apparently those are not too common in A&G these days.

These are the non sport players. Can’t say I have heard of any of these individuals, however Tkacyzk (top right) had a pretty sad story, losing his leg in a tour bus incident and overcoming that to be able to inspire others.

Some shiny chrome cards. Not a bad deal getting a Trout, however not even my oldest knows who Quavo is???

Have really liked these X-ray cards that I’ve seen online. Think this would be one cool subset to actually go after.

Not a bad mix of minis. One shiny Chrome, one black border, one gold. The Ohtani and Murakami are both the A&G back. And loving the Florida one where I’ll be traveling here soon.

Now onto the Panini hot mess. Started off decent getting a few old stars, Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken not a bad start. However imagine my excitement in the 2nd pack when the the first 8 or 9 cards were all the same as the other pack…so out of 40 cards there 16 duplicates. I don’t typically buy Panini and not sure why they even bother these days. Good news is that these were not too costly but the lack of effort is pretty disappointing!