2025 (sorta) purchase: TriStar signed mini football helmet

Happy August, y'all! I believe this is the last item I need to show off from May.

Some of you may recall that back in February I posted a couple TriStar mystery signed baseballs I picked up from Dave & Buster's last year. Well, back in May around my birthday I made a return trip determined to use up my tickets (I'm not planning on going again for a while) with designs on nabbing a similar item. For something like 50% more tickets than the baseballs, I got a mystery mini football helmet:

As always the box gives you an idea of some of the biggest names you could find, though we all know those are super unlikely.

Naturally J.J. McCarthy's name drew my attention here, though I'd love getting pretty much any Michigan player's signature on the iconic winged helmet.

As Rice's example proves, it's not just NFL team helmets you can find, but also special Hall of Fame versions too.

And you also have a shot at redemptions for other stuff like signed cards and jerseys.

As expected, I ended up with a helmet, and while it wasn't of a player I collect, I was reasonably satisfied:

Hey! It's a Vikings QB! Just not the one I wanted.

But Daunte Culpepper was a fairly notable NFL QB for a few seasons in the 2000s. UCF's signal-calller from 1996-98, he trended up in all of the important stats and placed sixth in the Heisman voting (won by some guy named Ricky Williams) in '98. The Vikes took him at #11 overall in '99, the fourth chosen at that position after Tim Couch, Donovan McNabb, and Akili Smith, went 1-2-3.

Daunte would start 80 games for Minnesota over the 2000-2005 seasons, and from 2000-04 he was at his peak, piling up 129 TDs, two Pro Bowl nods (03-04), and a second-place finish in '04 to Peyton Manning for Offensive Player of the Year.

Unfortunately he went just 38-42-0 for the Vikings, and he'd finish his career with short stops in Miama, Oakland, and Detroit. In the case of the latter, he went 0-5-0 for the toothless Lions in each of 2008 and '09 before hanging 'em up.

All that said, he was a pretty big name for a while at the start of that decade, and therefore a solid name to pull here.

As for the item itself, I think these Riddell mini helmets are quite cool and lend themselves well to autographs. Culpepper's signature looks like "Dt C???" but at least he included his jersey number with Minnesota (and Detroit), #11.

I haven't decided what to do with this yet as I'd need to determine interest first, but I think my ideal situation would be to swap it for one of a player I like. I'm not really a seller at this point in my collecting career, and I'd prefer to get something similar in return instead of cards.

So while I try to figure that out, if anyone's interested in it, please drop me a comment here and maybe we can work something out.

And the next time you see a post here I believe it'll be my lone blogger trade package from June.