Sunday, March 25, 2018

A Dawgs Day For My Mail Box

Football has always been in my blood as I have mentioned on here many times. I watch it, I used to play it, the only video game I play is Madden, I collect cards of it and have memorabilia from it. Not to mention, football has brought me many memories in my life I will never forget.

Some are recent like the NY Giants two Super Bowl wins over the Patriots, and some are from the past like when I played and when I chased these helmets.

These mini pain in the butt helmets as I once called them because of my chase to get them all.

Back in the 90's our local grocery store had those quarter machines where you would insert a quarter, turn the handle and out came a prize in a bubble. The only one I would ever play was the mini football helmet one because of my growing love of the game. I didn't want candy, I wanted something that was going to last.

The bubble would give you the helmet, stickers and facemask for you to assemble yourself. I always made sure to put them on right the first time as I am sure my OCD would have kicked it if I hadn't. The helmets I would then use to display and sometimes create my own kitchen floor board game with. I had a creative mind back then.

I would do extra chores for my grandmother to earn quarters to go back and buy more. I wanted the whole set and I wasn't going to give up til I had it. The problem was, you didn't get to choose which helmet came out. There were many times I would land the same one over and over again. Especially when I got down to just a couple I needed. My father even had begun to help me in the search and we would watch the balls drop to see which teams may be coming up next and insert as many quarters as we could to push the ones down we needed faster.

It had become such a craze that my uncles, aunts and friends even began to buy some to see if it's the final ones I needed. Finally, my uncle landed the last two I needed for my set and it was complete after a year long trial of finding them.

All was at peace til they released a second series the following year. These ones were more buffed up and had updated face masks along with a new .50 price tag. Would I torture myself all over again by trying to chase these down??? I thought about it after buying three but realized it was going to be more costly and that I was happy with what I had. So I just held onto these three.

Since then I have seen a few different versions of these come out over the years and even in baseball form which I will touch on another day. The most recent football ones I had seen come with everything already assembled and even though I am much older now, I still had the itch to pull the trigger on trying to at least land a NY Giants one from the machine but I stopped myself as I told myself I was strictly sticking to collecting cards. 

And speaking of just collecting cards and NY Giants, Angus who blogs Dawg Day Cards , sent me a pretty sweet mail day. He had contacted me about a week ago and mentioned he had some cards to send but needed an address to send them to and boom, they arrived. They actually arrived in time for my birthday, I am just a bit behind on posting them.

This was pretty cool. I am not sure what it is I assume a sticker, but a great throwback and a really cool piece to my Giants PC.


Speaking of stickers, this is the oldest one I have. Almost ranks as the oldest Giants item I own.


Cool Beckett covers dual card with Odell on the front


and the Shep on the back.


More Odell love right here. I didn't have this Topps Prime rookie insert.


Some base cards spread across years and products.
 



Some 2017 Contenders I needed. I didn't buy much for 2017 so anything from then is mostly new.
   

Even some shiny stuff found it's way into this mail day. I always dig some Prizm.


These are really awesome. 1995 Topps football Jacksonville Jaguars stamped. These were included in specific complete sets in 1995 and not something I own. They also made a Carolina Panthers version I will need to chase the team set down of at some point as well.




In the Jaguars parallel set is also this guy. Yup Rodney! I had the base version but was missing the 1,000 yard club one. Another one checked off!


Speaking of checking them off, here is another Rodney I no longer need.


And even another new Rodney,  A pretty cool Excalibur Die Cut. Every time I add a new Rodney, it makes me miss those sweet, sweet 90's products.


I do have these four but these will be added to my pile of "seconds" of Rodney that I use to display in the man cave.
 

A big thanks goes out to Angus for sending me this mail day and I truly appreciate your generosity. There were a ton of new great adds for my PC in here and even three new Rodney's! I am stoked.

As for those mini helmets above, I still have those and don't plan on moving them as they have a place in my past and are apart of my football history and memories. Now Angus as well has a place in that too.

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