Happy Puigiversary

I received my 26th different Yasiel Puig card yesterday. It's this tremendous GQ N174 insert, and it came from Zippy Zappy at Cervin' Up Cards (a proper post dedicated to his awesome mailing is a few days away).

It's very fitting because as you may have heard, one year ago today, Puig played his first major league game and made an instant impact, especially in the collecting world.

The hobby is now overflowing with Puig cards. Topps, slipping into that familiar bandwagon overkill mode of theirs (if I ever have a band it's going to be called "Bandwagon Overkill"), has included stupid stuff like two Puig cards in the same insert set in 2014 Topps.

So, since that giddy day when I received my first Puig card almost one year ago, here is what I've accumulated since:

 

 

I'm sure you can see how truly pointless some of them are.

But I could have a lot more Puigs than I do.

I'm not actively looking for Puig cards. So I don't have most of the parallels, definitely don't have any of the stupid exclusives or variations, and haven't even bothered with this year's sets of Bowman, Gypsy Queen, Opening Day or Archives, where I'm sure he's featured multiple times.

Most of the above has come from generous collectors or the luck of the draw (the red rain Puig parallel was pulled out of a pack bought by my wife on Valentine's Day -- awwwww).

So that's saying something, if I have 26 Puig cards -- virtually by osmosis.

It took me 11 years -- 11 years -- to accumulate that many cards of my most favorite player of all-time Ron Cey. And by the time I had my 26th Cey card, he was well into his forgettable Cubs period.

Don't get me wrong, I like Puig and am happy to say that his detractors were ill-advised when they predicted he'd be a one-year wonder (or even not succeed at all). I celebrate this day because the Dodgers made last year's NLCS thanks in part to Puig.

But if I was told I could keep either my 26 Puig cards or my 26 Cey cards and have to throw the other 26 in the river, well, the Puig cards would be dumped without a thought.

After all, it was a lot more difficult to get those Cey cards.