I was hoping this blog post would be a little more of a celebration...

I should have the contest winner and a post figured out soon, I am heading out of town for work for a couple days so expect something around the end of the week.

Recently Sam over at The Daily Dimwit held a football related group break featuring boxes of 2011 Elite and 2011 Crown Royale.  I haven't been doing too much with the football side of my collection but with my 49ers playing well and with the Crown product being included (one of my favorites) I decided to take a chance on entering.  Of course the big hope was pulling a rookie card of our new starting Quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, let's see how that panned out.  I also got the Buccaneers as my second random team.

The first box was the Elite box. 

I pulled 5 base cards, two of my 49ers.  Crabtree and Gore both had great years for the Niners and I got 3 Bucs base as well.  Pretty typical base card design from Elite, I tend to like it.


I was very happy to see this card pop up, one of the hits from the Elite break:

An on card auto of 2011 4th Round pick Kendall Hunter.  Hunter was having a solid year this year until an injury knocked him out for the rest of the season.  LaMichael James picked up the slack and made some pretty exciting plays.  Wonder what might happen next year and if James' fumble in the Super Bowl will have an impact on his confidence or the team's confidence in him.  That may play into Hunter's role in 2013.

At this point I was pretty happy.  I was hoping I might score a nice card or two from the Crown box.  Possibly a numbered Patrick Willis or a base rookie card of Aldon Smith.  Sam posted up a video of the box break and since I knew Crown Royale was a quick break I figured what the heck, I won't cheat and scroll to the bottom, I'll just watch the video. 

Imagine my joy and surprise when this popped out:

An awesome looking Colin Kaepernick Rookie Royalty Jersey/Auto card.  This one is numbered 031/100.  I really like the design of the card with the almost fully body picture, some golden accents around the jersey swatch and great placement of the auto.  Of course, on card would be preferred over a sticker auto but man what a pull!

Thanks Sam for the great break.  I haven't added too much in the way of 49ers to my collection lately but this sure helped out greatly in that department.