A Nice Going Away Gift From Royals and Randoms

Shortly before I moved, Josh over at Royals and Randoms dropped me a note to see if I had moved yet or not.  He said he had some cards to send over my way.  Luckily, my family hadn't moved yet but I was already working in KC.  Josh swung by the house (I think it might have been when the movers were there) and dropped a bubble mailer in my mail box.  Josh moved near by me a while back and we never got a chance to connect face to face.  With my move being unexpected and my travel to KC almost immediate once I got the new job, I never imagined I would be leaving the area so quickly.

The package was waiting for me right before we took our trek across the country and it was filled with some excellent stuff, take a look.

First up are these oversized 1997 Strat-O-Matic cards:

I didn't know that this set existed and love the fact that the cards have the player photos on them.  I should take some time to figure out if a checklist exists that might show what is out there.  I haven't had the urge to pick up Strat-O-Matic game cards that don't have photos but really like these.  Very cool oddball.

Most of my blog focuses on baseball cards and much of my player collecting attention focuses on my SF Giants collection.  Josh is one of the great bloggers who helps feed my USC Trojan collection and included 5 relic cards in this package:

All 5 of these are of star players where they were at USC and despite a pretty expansive USC relic collection, I needed 4 of these 5 in my collection.  I can't remember a time that a random group of cards so fit my needs.  My favorites here are the Lee and Jarrett cards, USC has a pretty awesome lineage of great college Wide Receivers starting back around the time of Keyshawn Johnson where there are at least 1-2 star WRs on the roster at a time and Lee and Jarrett are two of the best I have seen.  I would say only Mike Williams is on par with them.

 Josh also include a couple non-card items that I really like:

I have no idea where he tracked this down but it is a pull string for a ceiling fan with a Giants branded baseball as the pull item.  I have it up on my ceiling fan in my new card room and it adds just a perfect touch of Giants to the middle of my room.

An finally...

 A cool little figure of former Giants 3rd baseman Pablo Sandoval.  At times I question how these figures compare in likeness to the actual player.  There is no doubt this one is spot on as my 9-year-old son came into my room, picked it up looking only at the face and said "Cool, Pablo!" and set it back down.  This is my first figurine of this type featuring a Giant and will have a nice place on my display shelf.

Josh, thanks so much for the going away gift.  I am been pulling a few nice Royals and live in Royals town now so I will get you a return package out one of these days. If there is anything specific you are looking for to fit into your Royals collection, let me know.  There is a pretty solid LCS pretty close to me.