One of These Things Is Not Like the Other (and Contest Results)

The free stuff just keeps on coming. Blogger giveaways have never been as plentiful as they have been this year and, though the trend has died down a little, there are still smatterings of free offers out there. Recently, I partook in a few giveaways from my fellow bloggers.

First, I claimed a few cards from Tom of The Angels, In Order. A few years ago, we did an exercise at a professional development day in our school district in which we were given four shapes and asked to find commonalities to group three of them together and decide which one didn't belong in the group. Depending on perspective, there were different possible answers. I found myself doing something similar with this group. Maybe Steve Young is the only non-baseball player. Or maybe Jeff Bagwell is the only card not to feature red. I noticed that Bagwell and Howard fit together because they're Starquest inserts. I haven't really found a way to exclude Howard from a group, though. Thoughts?

Anyway, I'm pretty sure I owned this Steve Young at some point, but it was apparently missing from my collection until I got this envelope.

Let's play again, this time with a trio of cards from Bo of Baseball Cards Come to Life! I say Bartkowski  doesn't belong because he is the only offensive player. Or maybe because he isn't wearing a college uniform. Take your pick. Or maybe Rudy doesn't belong because that is actually a baseball card, from A&G. Or maybe it's Darrelle Revis who is the misfit, because that is the only insert of the bunch. I only claimed Rudy and Revis, but Bo threw in Bartkowski for me, too. I'm not going to complain about a free card from 1979 of a player who was the number one overall pick in the draft.

The last group of cards was part of Jeff B's Wax Pack Wonders Pick 3 giveaway. He offers three tiers of players, and you can select one player from each tier to get a few cards.

I selected Cal Ripken as one my players. I'll let you play the "Which one doesn't belong?" game with these. I'd be interested in hearing your answers in the comments. I will just say that this is a pretty cool group of cards, with a promo, a pop-up, and Pacific Spanish card included.

The second player I selected was Tim Salmon. Again, I'd be interested in hearing how you would group these cards in the comments. My favorite here is the Tombstone Pizza card. I remember having one or two of those back in the day when I was a kid.

The final player I chose was Ronald Acuna. These are some strikingly colorful and sharp-looking cards, in my opinion. Let's see, the two DK cards can be grouped, leaving out GQ. Or the two base cards can be grouped, leaving out the Gallery of Stars. Maybe the two cards showing the swing follow-through are together, but not the DK base of him running. What do you think?

Thanks to all of those bloggers for the cards. Every single one of them was new to my collection. That brings me to our last topic of the day: contest results from my last post. I received a boatload of Cubs cards from Roy and asked readers to guess what percentage of those Cubs cards was new to my collection. Eleven people made their guesses, but only one could be the closest and declared the winner.

The answer is that 282 of the 726 cards were new and added to my collection. My middle school English teacher math says that is 38.8%. 

 Entrants

1. John Sharp--11%
2. Elliptical Man--20%
   
3. acrackedbat--26%
4. Fuji--31%
5. Diamond King--32%
   
6. Jeff B.--40%
7. Sports Card Collectors--40%
8. hockey kazi--53%
9. Jon--58%
10. Bo--66%
11. bbcardz--72%
    

By my best reckoning, Jeff B. was the closest, guessing 40% and missing by just 1.2 percentage points. Congrats, Jeff! I'll put together a prize package for you. Thanks to all of you who played along.