Randomization time! This contest is going the distance

Let's give some cards away!

As a quick reminder, here's all 117 entries (in the order I received them):


Next, here's each person who entered, and the number of entries they earned:

Al Kawamoto (Hockey Kazi)	3
Alex (Chavez Ravining)	8
Brian (Play at the Plate)	7
Chris (Nachos Grande)	1
Chris (Raz Card Blog)	13
Chuck Bartz	4
Curtis (Condition Sensitive)	3
defgav (Baseball Card Breakdown)	8
Doug (Sports Cards From the Dollar Store)	1
Eric Eckstein	5
Greg (PTSiA)	13
Jack (Baseball Dad)	3
Jim (GCRL)	1
Josh Liss	3
Kyle Wong	4
Mark (Baseball Nation)	4
Matt (Bob Walk the Plank)	3
Max (Starting 9)	3
Pat (Hot Corner Cards)	5
Roger (Cool Breeze Baseball Buzz)	4
Stewart65	3
Swing and a Popup	5
Tim (Great Sports Name Hall of Fame)	6
Tony (Off Hiatus Baseball)	6
Triple Play Autos	1

Ok, here's the deal:  I'm gonna take the list above, paste it into random.org, then randomize it 11 times, because

THIS CONTEST GOES TO 11

You know, if I hadn't mentioned that.

So 11 randomizings, and then the first 11 unique names that come up are our winners!

A quick note:  though it says "You have randomized this list 10 times" at the very bottom, I did indeed randomize it 11 times; you have two randomize three times for it to consider it "twice" and so on.

Congratulations to our big winners!:

1. Brian (Play at the Plate)
2. Kyle Wong
3. Tony (Off Hiatus Baseball)
4. Greg (PTSiA)
5. Eric Eckstein
6. Max (Starting 9)
7. Al Kawamoto (Hockey Kazi)
8. Alex (Chavez Ravining)
9. Tim (Great Sports Name Hall of Fame)
10. Josh Liss
11. Swing and a Popup

Brian gets dibs on whatever he wants (though I'll hazard a guess at his #1 choice).  Everyone else on the list, please shoot me an email (caljr3000 at gmail) or leave a comment with your choices ranked in the order you'd want them most, from 1-11.  As a reminder, all prizes can be seen here.  Canadian winners, depending on how things fall I'll contact you directly to make other arrangements, but for now please send me your lists too.

For those of you who didn't win, rest assured that I've found some other extras to throw in as consolation prizes.  And by the way, I still need addresses from the following:

• Al Kawamoto (Hockey Kazi)
• Chris (Nachos Grande)
• Chuck Bartz
• Josh Liss
• Max (Starting 9)
• Triple Play Autos

And thank you again to everyone who participated.  Once I have all the addresses and sufficient packing materials (I may require a quick order over at BCW, we'll see), I'll get what you claimed/won out to you!

And now I'm headed downtown for a fun concert featuring one of my favorite bands growing up:  Cake!  (Hence the title, if you hadn't figured that out).

Win-win contest winners!

Time to announce the winners of my latest contest, as advertised (if I didn't mention it) on

(I have now fulfilled my promise to Sam that I'd pimp that blog every time I posted about this contest in exchange for him pimping this contest on that blog.  Sam--no need to send your be-mulletted goons in wife-beaters to break my kneecaps and berate me for voting for Barack HUSSEIN Obama; we're totally even, bud.)

Prize for followers:
Here's the drawing for the main prize, awarded to a random person who participated by following a new blog he/she wasn't following before.  I took the following list, comprising each entrant in the order in which I received them:

1.  The Diamond King followed 26 Cent Summer
2.  BA Benny's Baseball Card Buffet followed Ryan's Pitch
3.  ARPSmith's Sportscard Obsession followed Drew's Cards
4.  My Cardboard Mistress followed Night Owl Cards
5.  My Sports Obsession followed Heartbreaking Cards of Staggering Genius
6.  Fantastic Catch followed BA Benny's Pack Rip Cafe
7.  The Daily Dimwit followed Poor Old Baseball Cards
8.  $30 a Week Habit followed Heartbreaking Cards of Staggering Genius
9.  Emerald City Diamond Gems followed Friars on Cardboard
10.  Cards on Cards followed ARPSmith's Sportscard Obsession
11.  Waxaholic followed The Snorting Bull
12.  Manupatches & Mustaches followed The Snorting Bull
13.  Canadian Cardboard followed $30 a Week Habit
14.  Tenets of Wilson followed 26 Cent Summer
15.  The Lost Collector followed Tenets of Wilson
16.  Justin's World followed Friars on Cardboard
17.  Plaschke, Thy Sweater is Argyle followed Ryan's Pitch
18.  My 2008 Topps Set Blog followed Hello, Victory!
19.  Nomo's Sushi Platter followed Phungo
20.  Play at the Plate followed The Snorting Bull
21.  Coot Veal and the Vealtones followed Cards That Never Were
22.  DocHoloday followed Waxaholic
23.  Dime Boxes followed Vintage Cubs Cards
24.  Cornado2010 followed Play at the Plate
25.  All Trade Bait, All the Time followed 26 Cent Summer
26.  Royals and Randoms followed Texas Rangers Cards
27.  Chipp 'n Dale followed Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz
28.  The Other World followed Andrew's Baseball Cards
29.  The Snorting Bull followed All Trade Bait, All the Time
30.  A Pack to Be Named Later (Jafronius) followed Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz
31.  Reader skroeker followed Fantastic Catch

So here we go.

JUAN

TUOHY

 

THREEVE

 

And your winner of the 2010 Topps Update baseball set and much, much more is Larry from Emerald City Diamond Gems!

Congrats, Larry!  Please shoot me an email and we'll work out your additional stuff.


Prize for most-followed blog:
31 of you submitted the name of (at least) one blog you began following.  In the event you listed more than one, I grabbed the first one you listed, but if you did follow more than one, good for you because that's awesome anyway!  We ended up with 23 different nominated blogs, which I thought was pretty cool, since that should give everybody some more reading material for quite a while, myself included.

The following blogs each received one new follow:

• $30 a Week Habit
• All Trade Bait, All the Time
• Andrew's Baseball Cards
• ARPSmith's Sportscard Obession
• BA Benny's Pack Rip Café
• Cards That Never Were
• Drew's Cards
• Fantastic Catch
• Hello, Victory!
• Night Owl Cards
• Phungo
• Play at the Plate
• Poor Old Baseball Cards
• Tenets of Wilson
• Texas Rangers Cards
• Vintage Cubs Cards
• Waxaholic

The following blogs each received two new follows:

• Friars on Cardboard
• Heartbreaking Cards of Staggering Genius
• Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz
• Ryan's Pitch

And leading the pack, we had two blogs garner a solid three new follows each:

• 26 Cent Summer
• The Snorting Bull

First of all, congrats to each of you who earned at least one new follower--you must be doing something right!  Depending on which of you I don't currently read, that number may rise pretty soon as I begin adding more of these to my daily reading.

So as you can see, we ended up with a two-way tie.  Back to random.org for the showdown:

My second congratulations of the day go out to 26 Cent Summer!  Matt is our winner here, and it looks like I may need to contact him myself because he never did enter the contest of his own volition.  Anyway, Matt, if you're reading this, you've got at least three new followers and some cool stuff coming to you, including a 2010 Topps Update Jayson Werth manu-bat barrel!

Thanks again to everyone who participated--I hope this was fun and even useful for those of you who didn't win.  Like I said, I tried to set this contest up in a way that even if you weren't chosen you might still get something out of it in the form of some fun new blogs to check out.  I can honestly say I was made aware of a bunch I hadn't even heard of but am now especially interested in following, and maybe that happened to you too.

Well, that's it for this contest, but I promise to come up with another one the next time I run out of ideas for content to post!

hiflew Likes Ike!

Johnny told me to steal images, which I interpreted as all of his images

If you're reading this you may be one of my regular users, but more likely you were involved in Johnny/hiflew's exciting break over at Cards From the Quarry (and I do sincerely mean exciting considering what was pulled).  Johnny politely asked me if I'd handle a couple randomizations for him since I was otherwise uninvolved and therefore impartial.  I readily agreed, somewhat because we'd traded before and he's a cool guy, and mostly because he's got Ollie Williams doing his weather reporting.

Johnny's instructions were to take the eligible teams for each card and randomize them three times.  I now present to you live footage of said discussion:


With that out of the way, here's what you probably already scrolled down to, or thereabouts considering there's a shiny video right above this.  We've got two cards up for grabs from Johnny's 2004 Topps Chrome II baseball portion of his break.

The first that we'll Holy Hand Grenade into someone's loving hands is a Presedential Pastime Refractor of James Madison:

How many Refractors do YOU have, Marbury?  That's what I thought, so suck it!

Old Jimbo here was US President #4, was dubbed the "Father of the Constitution" and rocked a mean wig, so he's got that goin' for him.  Also he did lots of other stuff.  </public_education>  What I'm going for is that the guy was one of the better presidents to pull, so whoever gets this card is getting something pretty nice.

Here's your timestamped randomization, brought to you by random.org, the sports card blogosphere's official provider of randomizations.  And now a word from Stampy, the random.org timestamp elephant:

I got nothing, just wanted a cheap Simpsons reference

Here's your list of eligible participants:

Four teams vie for the J-Mad.  Who will it be?

And-a one

And-a two

CUBS WIN!  CUBS WIN!

Congratulations to "Jon" whose name I don't recognize but who will now enjoy the Refractor-y goodness of Mr. Constitution Sr.

I saved the big prize for last, which interestingly has even more eligible winners, the Presidential First Pitch seat relic of Dwight D. Eisenhower:

Pictured:  Ike giggling at the suggestion that Washington would throw THAT much money at Jayson Werth

(As opposed to Dwigt)

Johnny reported this as a case hit, and they are indeed 1:15 box-loader packs, so this was definitely a nice pull.  Ike was the 34th President and was a Republican, which means he automatically had it in for the possibly-yet-unborn Thorzul.  He's considered one of the greatest presidents ever, and this is a sweet addition to anyone's collection.  The seat, incidentally, comes from an appropriate place--Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C., home of the now-defunct Senators (the ones that got paid to play baseball, not screw you) and the Redskins.

Ok, that's enough context, on with the button-pushing:

Well that many people will certainly make this more interesting.

Juan

Too

And your winner is the OTHER team from Chicago, the OzzieSox.  Congrats to Darren on the big win!

So there you have it, a couple impartial randomizations.  High fives to both the winners and a tip of the hat to everyone else who participated in another fine break by hiflew.  Now to make you feel more at home during your time away from his site, here's some purple so you don't suffer from withdrawal: