A friend indeed

This week has been the kind of week that only late January could produce.

Nothing particularly wrong or terrible happened. Mostly what I felt this week was a sense of spinning my wheels, of working hard without result (or with other people screwing it up), of trying to get things accomplished (while battling a sinus infection) only to have a car noise or a phone call knock me back to square one.

That feeling transferred over to the blog where I probably spent too much time uploading too many photos and conducting too much research and expecting too much in return.

But all of this is a phase. It's the January malaise. I'll snap out of it. It could be worse. I could be dealing with three feet of snow right now instead of the melting three inches that is out there.

And I could be struggling through this week without an envelope in the mail from "A Friend".

That's right, "A Friend".

That's how the return address appeared on the envelope. Just above the street, city and zip code, where the sender's name usually goes. All it said was "A Friend".

Terrific.

I need a friend right now.

The left half of my card desk, where my incoming card packages reside, is completely empty. I showcased the last package from a fellow collector the other day. It's freakish to see it that clean and clear. It seems the card exchanging is part of the malaise, too (full disclosure: I've sent out a few card packages the last couple of weeks, but it's been just a few).

But my friend took care of that little matter. This is what was in my friend's envelope:

A friend indeed.

These all were wants from 1956 Topps set quest. They wiped out just about all of the commons left on that list. Most of what remains are stars and team cards, which will take me plenty of time to knock off, but it's pretty cool to need just 32 more cards to finish the set!

I'm looking forward to getting to know most of these guys (except for you, Larsen, I know about you) and putting them in that '56 binder.

All I know about the sender is that the address is in Texas. I went through my address book trying to match it up, but there are about 20 people in that book who live in Texas and nothing matches. I wonder if it's the same person who sent me the '56 Bob Feller?

Anyway, I sure do appreciate someone thinking of me like this when I need just a little bit of a lift.

I'm sure I'll be featuring several of these cards on future '56 of the Month posts, which no doubt will be ignored.

Sorry, that's just the third week of January talking.