Fundraiser/Raffle Recap

First things first, I would like to thank each and every one of you for the support of my fundraising raffle. The kind words, sharing of the post, and number of tickets purchased all reinforced what I already knew. This is a really great community that I get to be a part of and I truly appreciate each of you! That being said, let's deal with the business first. All told, there were 28 total tickets sold. That equaled $140 to be donated directly to Chris and his family. I did encounter one little hiccup as I went to make the donation prior to writing this. I didn't realize that the only way to donate on GoFundMe is via credit card. That was not a feasible option for me and since I had all of the funds in my PayPal account, I asked Chris if I could donate to him that way.

Oh yeah, as an added bonus, today happens to be Delia's first Birthday! So, with this info, I had my way to donate.

...and there it goes! Quite honestly, the total surpassed what I had hoped for and I couldn't be happier!

Now, on to the raffle! Here is the list of entries(written in order of receiving them).

As per the rules that were laid out in the original post, the entire list was randomized eight times. Like so:

The big congrats(and the Cal Ripken auto) go out to Jon! Please email me(tim.trisomenc@gmail.com) your contact info Jon. I will be sure to get this mailed out to you this coming week. Thanks again for all of the support for this. I'll be getting back to a more regular posting schedule in the coming days. As always, thanks for reading!

A Year Sure Does Go By Fast + An Anniversary Contest

WOW, a year ago today, I published my first post on this humble little blog. It's hard for me to believe that I've been writing here for that long already because I still fell like such a rookie most of the time.

The look on Swish's face says it all, I'm pretty excited to have made it this far. When I started things, I had no plan, no expectations, and had no idea how frequently I'd write or if anyone would actually see any of it. I just wanted to explore another aspect of our hobby that would bring my enjoyment of it to another level. Well, here is what my first year looked like:

• This is my 162nd post published
• 25 of you have actually liked the content enough to follow the blog
• I have no frame of reference to know how good(or not) a number it is, but the post that has had the highest number of views in my first year was my tribute to The Ultimate Warrior post that has over 1900 views. For some of you, it may be a regular occurrence to see those kind of numbers, but for me it is unfathomable.

Thank you to all of you out there that have read, commented, and/or proposed a trade. Establishing relationships with all of you wonderful folks of the 'cardsphere' has been great!

Now that the thanks have been given, here's the part of the post that you've been waiting for since you clicked on it: the contest! Since it's my one year anniversary and traditionally paper is the gift that corresponds with that, I'm going to give at least one lucky reader the gift of paper(cardboard is paper, right)! It's the first contest that I've run so I'm going to keep it simple. Here's the details:

• To enter, just leave a comment on this post. Entries will be open until the end of the day on 12/16. To ensure that I get all entries counted properly, there will be a limit of one entry per person. Sorry, no bonus entries for promoting the contest on your blog though I'd love it if some of you would be willing to do that.
• Once all entries are in, I will randomize the entries 9 times to find the winner(Jeter #2 + Elway #7 = 9 times). Depending on the number of entries, I may select more than one winner. I'll keep you updated on this.
• I don't have a specific prize set aside so I'll do my best to customize the prize pack to fit the collecting interests of the winner(s).

There you have it. It's been a great first year and I'm looking forward to building on it to make year two even better! Thanks for reading and good luck!