So I logged into my Million Card Giveaway account to see what trade offers were available. It was the usual detritus - six 1985 to 1988 cards for my 1971 Curt Blefary, an '89 Ozzie Smith for my '71 Johnny Jeter, five junk wax cards for my Luis Tiant, and my personal favorite, a 1987 Don Mattingly All-Star card for the 1968 card in my account.

Not even the regular card. The All-Star card.

W

T

F???


Hang on, what's this? An offer for my 1956 Jim Davis (aka the oldest card in my collection). It's another 1956 card, and it's not a Cub. In fact, it's a White Sox card:

Hello Dixie Howell. I do believe I'll trade for you.

The back of the card says that Dixie Howell made the majors in 1955 after twenty years in the minor leagues. In a feat reminicent of Ron Mahay or Rick Ankiel in reverse, Dixie actually tried to break in to the Reds team in 1943 as an outfielder, and made it 12 years later as a pitcher instead. He is not to be confused with Dixie Howell the catcher, although the MCG site seems to do that anyway. But the best part of this card isn't any of that. It's his full name:


Yes, Dixie Howell is named after one of America's great forgotten presidents, Millard Fillmore. I'm not really sure what would possess parents to name their child after Millard Fillmore. I'm pretty sure that even by 1920, he was already considered a mediocre president. You have to wonder - did he have a brother named Franklin Pierce Howell? Or Martin Van Buren Howell, perhaps?

No wonder he went by Dixie, even though he was from Pennsylvania.

Well, it's mostly just one guy, but he seems really desperate to get his hands on my 1976 Fred Stanley. He even offered me a sweet deal on a 1979 Ron Blomberg - twice! Maybe he read my Bo Belinsky post?

And, of course, there's the obligatory crappy 1987 card offer...

Tonight is the seventh night of Hannukah. There's one more night left, after tonight.

Bo Belinsky, who was newly unlocked and placed in my Million Card Giveaway account by the Transmogifier, wishes you a Happy Hannukah. He also wants to know which Hollywood starlet you've set him up with on a blind date.

I wonder how many offers of 1987 junk wax I'll get for Bo. I may have to borrow Dayf's schtick. No you can't have my Bo!

I planned to start this post by congratulating King Felix on his well-deserved Cy Young award, then showing off the cards of his that I bought on my trip to Al's Card Shop today. Small problem - they didn't have any Felix cards. Well, that's not strictly true; there was one, but I already owned it.

So what to write about? I was stumped. I bought some cards, to be sure. A few Griffeys, Ichiros, Lincecums and even a Matt Wieters. A couple of team bags full of commons from the 2009 American Heritage set that I haven't decided will be a new Good Little Set for me to collect or not (it probably will, because I've reached The Tipping Point - expect a post on that soon). And some other stuff.

The big news is that Len finally got some new baseball stock, including 2010 Topps Update. Of course, I had just ordered a box of that earlier this week. But hey, this is a rare opportunity to pick up a couple of packs of the most current release, just like everyone else in the blogosphere does. So I got two packs from a freshly opened hobby box. Len even gave me the rookie chrome refractor, which was nice. Turned out to be Sam Demel, which wasn't great, but I took it as a sign that I had arrived as a Valued Customer.

As far as the two backs, I can't complain. No ZOMGSTEPHENSTRASBURG!!! cards, but from what others have written, I'm not too worried, my turn will come, probably in the jumbo box that's currently sitting in Singapore. I did get a Legendary Lineage, a Card Your Mom Threw Out and a Turkey Red card - which happens to be the only insert sets I care about. And I got an MCG redemption card.

Because I'm up in Perth, I decided to redeem the code straight away because I don't trust myself not to lose it. Looking at the "recently unlocked cards" I wasn't holding up much hope - there was even a 2010 Strasburg amongst the last ten. I typed in RwsxKDF4L (what do I care - it's already redeemed), hit click, and up popped:

Sure it's a Cub, I've never heard of the guy, and it looks beat up all to hell, but it's a 1956 card. And it's the oldest one in my collection (although only by 3 years). A nice way to wrap up my first '10 Update purchase.

Things got back to normal for me, as far as pulling new cards and not duplicates. I only got two doubles and they both involved Ichiro. One was his base card, and the other was the AL batting leaders card. As far as I'm concerned, the more Ichiro, the better.

Actually, that's not quite true. There was another duplicate. Midway through pack three, I pulled this:

Then, with the very next card, I got this:


Not that I'm complaining, but two Million Card Giveaway redemption cards back-to-back? That gives me four cards already in this box, and I'm not even halfway through. Has anyone else had something like this happen to them? Two redemption cards in a row, or even in the same pack?

Well, the corpse of my 2009 Topps box wasn't even cold before I cracked open the 2010 box. Heartless bastard, I know. I opened four packs, and am going to keep opening them four at a time until they're all gone.

The first pack was uneventful, but the second one contained a nice surprise - a Million Card Giveaway redemption card. And having *just* read this post from Play at the Plate about how the Transmogrifier was unstuck, I decided to head on over to the Topps site immediately. Sure enough, on the "recently unlocked cards" graphic there were 8 cards from the 60s and 70s, as well as one from the 90s and one from 2005. Pretty good odds, I figured. So I entered the code and...

Sunovabitch.

But I pressed on, undeterred. And in my next pack, wouldn't you know it, another MCG redemption card was staring at me. "Surely, this couldn't happen two times in a row," I said. Having looked at the updated recent cards chart, my Carter card was the only none 60s or 70s card. So I rolled the dice, typed in the nine-digit code with all the question marks and ampersands, and it spat out...


That's more like it. Former Bird Curt Blefary, albeit as a Yankee. A horizontal card in all its early 70s day-glo and lower-case fontted glory. Finally, a card worth having. But I wasn't done, oh no. Because in the next pack...well, it wasn't another redemption card. But midway through the pack, I saw this:


A Johnny Bench '73 Topps Yo Mamma card replica! Cautiously, I turn the card over to look at the back. Do I dare dream?


OH HELL YEAH!

...then go onto the Topps Million Card site and trade me for it...


UPDATE: It's gone, baby! Flipped it for an '03 Brad Ausmus.