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!

Trying to do a Good Deed - Please Read

I will begin this post by apologizing in advance. Historically I have not wanted to use this space for the type of content that follows, but as I briefly explained a few posts back, a situation was recently brought to my attention that I feel is worth going 'off script' for. 

I am a member of a Facebook collecting/box and case break group on FB. A few weeks back, a post on there caught my attention and has held it pretty firmly since. In short, the guy that runs the group found out that one of the members(Chris) had a young daughter(Delia is still shy of her first birthday) that is in need of a heart transplant. The admin of the group took it upon himself to do some fundraising even though Chris didn't ask him to do so. I felt compelled to participate in the fundraiser there and have since become FB friends with Chris. So, why am I writing this up on here? When I first read about Delia's need it really hit home since I have three daughters of my own. I thought to myself that I could only hope that if one of my daughters was ever in a similar situation and needed something, there would be someone willing to go out of their way to offer some assistance the way that the group admin(and many of the group members) did. As I said, I donated and felt pretty good, but I couldn't shake the feeling that it wasn't enough. I messaged Chris and asked him if it would be OK to share Delia's story(and their family struggles) with this great card blogging community. He gave me his permission and I began silently brainstorming a way that I could potentially maximize the additional help I hope to offer. This is part of the reason that posts on here have been few and far between over the past few weeks.

With all of that said, here is my plan. I am going to raffle off this bad boy.

Before outlining details, I want everyone to know that 100% of the funds generated through this raffle will be going directly to Chris and his family.

As some may remember, I was fortunate enough to pull this awesome Cal Ripken Jr. auto from my jumbo box of Topps series 1. At the time, I didn't think I'd be planning to let it go. I honestly think it is the card that could generate the most interest in what I hope to accomplish, so here it is. This is open to anyone who reads regularly or happens to find this post by any means. the cost is $5/'ticket' or spot in the raffle. I am not going to put any limits on the number of entries per person. If you're interested, please comment how many 'tickets' or spots you would like to purchase. Payment can be sent via PayPal. The email associated with my account is: mysahornets@yahoo.com  Please make all payments as friends/family and do not write any comments. I'm going to let this run for a week. All entries should be in by 12:00AM next Saturday, 6/4. All entries will be fed into the randomizer in the order they are received. All entries will be randomized 8 times(the Ironman's jersey number). If all entries are paid, I will run the random sometime 6/4 AM and will post the results on here the same day. Please feel free to share this post anywhere you feel comfortable, I'd love as much visibility for this post as possible. 

Once again, I apologize for using this space for a 'contest' of this sort, but i hope you can all see why I though this was important enough to do so. If anyone is interested in donating on their own, or just learning more specifics about Delia's situation, please check out her GoFundMe page. For anyone who is compelled to send their own donation, please label it with the hashtag: #cardsphere4delia. I always thank you all for reading, but on this post, I appreciate it more than usual.