Diamond Giveaway Highlights

1959 Topps #412, 1965 Topps #296 and 1967 Topps #68

I recently received an envelope from the good people from The Topps Company containing my haul from last year's Diamond Giveaway promotion.  I largely ignored the Million Dollar Giveaway back in 2010, but I was an active participant in 2011's Diamond Giveaway, as I tried to trade for cards I actually needed for my Phillies collection.  I have to say, I'm pretty pleased with how things turned out.

The cards I received aren't in mint condition, but that doesn't bother me.  Each of these cards gets me closer to having the complete run of Topps Phillies base cards from 1951 through today.  The Stan Lopata card came my way via a trade for a 1959 Topps Billy Consolo card, which was the oldest card I unlocked.  I also unlocked cards from 1969, 1972 and 1975, which I parlayed into the other Phillies cards I've displayed here.

Tony Taylor's 1965 card is in great shape, with four sharp corners.  Bob Buhl's card is a little dinged up, but frankly he scares me a little bit, so I'm not going to mention it to him.  I'll just slide his card into the pocket waiting for him with the rest of my 1967 Topps cards and move along.

I found that collectors participating on the Diamond Giveaway site are very unlikely (at least with me) to trade for anything from 1985 or later.  I've been sitting on these same seven cards for the past year and my attempts to trade them for Phillies cards from the same year has been futile:

1985 Topps #243 Barbaro Garbey (Tigers)
1988 Topps #96 Todd Benzinger (Red Sox)
1991 Topps #359 Chuck Cary (Yankees)
1992 Topps #136 Bill Doran (Reds)
1994 Topps #160 Scott Lydy (Athletics)
1996 Topps #367 Javy Lopez (Braves)
2007 Topps #331 Kelly Johnson (Braves)

I even tried lumping all seven cards together for a couple of Phillies cards I needed from 2002, to no avail.  So for now, they'll sit in my inventory until at least June 30, 2012, when the Diamond Giveaway site goes dark and these cards revert back to Topps.