If Santa blogged and threw random cards down the chimney ...

... he'd be David of Tribe Cards, of course! Although, I believe Dave uses more traditional means of delivery. I've never found soot on any of my card packages.

David recently held a giveaway. Yeah, I know, you're shocked. David? Giving stuff away? Stingy Dave? But he did. The plan was he would send random packs of cards to folks who requested them. Then, through some sort of super scientific randomizing method that you can't make me explain, he decided how many packs each person would receive. I somehow ended up with eight. There were like 40 cards in each pack. So he sent me over 300 cards. Just amazing.

And when Dave says random, he means random. I'm strictly a baseball card collector. But I received football cards, hockey cards, movie cards, cartoon cards, just everything. Still, most of them were baseball, which is great, because I don't want to get hooked on any non-baseball stuff. I have too much to handle as it is.

I'll show a few of the cards here. No theme to tie all the cards together. Just total randomness:

1993 Topps Jim Abbott. I feel required to show any card of Jim Abbott that I receive. Just because he's so cool.

1987 Topps Pete Rose. Did not have this card, so I'm super happy about that. Rose hit .219 in 1986. Wow.

I recently picked up a whole mess of 1988 Score from Scott of Hand Collated, so now I look at any '88 Score card I receive with skepticism. "I must have this card already," I scoff. But, in fact, I did not have the Buddy Bell card yet.

Oooh, "E.T." cards. Part of getting older is watching movies that were huge during your younger days and seeing whether they hold up. "E.T.," which came out when I was 16, was groundbreaking in a pop sort of way, and of course one of the biggest movies of all-time. Last year, I watched it for the first time since 1982 as my daughter wanted to see it. It wasn't as bad as some of the other big movies of the time, but it did seem a bit cheap. My daughter basically shrugged her shoulders after it was over. Kind of sad.

This card made me remember that I bought a whole slew of these Score hockey cards in 1993. I don't know what happened to them all. I must've sold them. I totally forgot I had them.

1991 Topps Chris Dahlquist. As you can see, the front of the card carries the same theme as the 1991 Topps baseball set. But the back doesn't.

Baseball got ripped off! Remember the boring red type on gray background of '91 Topps? This is so much better.

Hey, Allen and Ginter! I know it's a checklist, but it's A&G, so I'm showing it. Card No. 53 is Marie's favorite card. Go ahead and zoom in on it to see (heh).

Oh, fine. Now, all the other checklists are getting jealous. Here. 1994 Topps. Happy now?

The only reason I know of Roy Hibbert is because he played for Georgetown and Big East basketball is huge where I live. But basketball is so wasted on me. And this is a numbered card, too. Giving me a numbered basketball card is like giving a potato to a fish.

Well, at least I know who Derrick Mason is. But, again, I don't collect football cards. Not even numbered ones.

These two 2008 Donruss Americana cards make me want to buy packs of this stuff. But every time I look at the display, hoping I'll pull a card of some lovely actress, I think of pulling a Gary Coleman card and that gets rid of the urge.

1984 Donruss rules like no other Donruss set rules! Quiet!!! I have spoken. Leave your contrary opinions in the comments where I can ignore them or delete them at my leisure.

It is so cool to get an '84 Donruss card in the mail. I'd love to collect this set. But the fact that it's a smidge hard to collect and that I only have like 50 cards prevent me from doing anything about it.

This was my favorite card of all of the random packs. There are certain sets from my formative collecting years that I am not actively collecting. 1982 Topps is one of them. So getting a card from the years when I memorized every single card I had is so cool. I have never seen THAT one before! That's the thought that goes through my head.

This card I thought I didn't have, but I actually do. However ...

This is one of those folders that we used to sell at the drug store where I worked (the folder didn't fit on my scanner). And I did NOT have this one. David said everything was totally random, but somehow I think this was targeted for my home.

I've already put it to use.

Thanks, Dave for all the cool stuff. It was very interesting going through these cards.