Season of Giving (to myself)

Spending quality time with my family and catching up with friends here and there has made the past week or much more hectic (in a good way) than my regular work schedule.  Unfortunately, I haven't been able to keep up with everyone's blog posts.  In fact, I've barely had the opportunity to play around with my own blog or card collection for that matter.  Things should settle down by next week when my "real" vacation begins.

In the meantime, I'll do my best to read your posts and comment whenever I have some free time.  I also apologize to SumoMenkoMan and Padrographs.  Both of these guys sent holiday care packages that have been opened, but thank you posts have yet to be written.  Hopefully I'll find a few minutes to publish something over the weekend.

In the meantime, I wanted to share a quick story from my Christmas morning.  While everyone in my family sat around opening up presents, my nephew handed his father another present.  Only this present wasn't from his wife, son, daughter, or any other family member.  It wasn't from a co-worker or friend.  It was a gift for himself.

Great minds think alike.  Or maybe it's just a sibling thing.  Whatever the case... last week in the midst of some last minute Christmas shopping, I decided buy myself something:

1999 Topps Autograph #T33

Some of you may remember that I'm currently working on a project involving autographs of every left-handed Cy Young Award winner.  Sabathia represents the 22nd addition to that collection, leaving only three guys left:  Frank Viola (1988 AL), Mark Davis (1989 NL), and Johan Santana (2004/2006 AL).

I honestly thought that Viola was going to be the next guy I'd cross off my list since there are tons of autographs of his floating around and they're very affordable.  But then two Sundays ago, Peter over at Baseball Every Night informed me that I had won his Ugly Baseball Card Contest.  The prize?  $35.

I had a few auctions on my watchlist that were ending later in the evening, and one of them was this Sabathia.  This card has eluded me for quite some time, because they always seem to close for way more than I'm willing to spend.  However Peter's contest winnings allowed me to increase my max bid and secure a Christmas present for myself that I really, really wanted.

Thank you Peter for hosting this very creative contest.  It was truly awesome reading everyone's contest responses.  I hope you enjoyed a very merry Christmas with your family.

Happy holidays and sayonara!