Contest Standings So Far, Plus the First FOUR Winners for the Prize Draft!

With the first round of voting (the play-in round) now in the books, the field of 64 sets is finally set and ready for our Ultimate Allen & Ginter Mini Set Bracket Challenge.  We ended up with 26 different brackets entered in the competition (though one was my personal bracket).  At the end of the play-in round, I'm sitting in third place but our leaders are Cracked Bat in first and Card Junk in second (only one point behind).  

If you are interested, here's where everyone stands so far (remember, the winner of the bracket will get first pick in the prize draft at the end of the competition)!

We still have a long, long way to go in the bracket portion of the competition but at least you know where you stand (I could only fit the top half or so of the brackets in the above image).

While we can't declare a winner in the bracket portion of the contest yet, we do have a few winners that we can determine today.  I've promised multiple ways to enter the contest and some of those ways have already passed so let's get some winners named!

Before I do so, I should note that it WILL be possible to win more than once.  For example, if one of our random winners also ends up winning the bracket challenge, that's perfectly fine by me.  Heck, the same person could end up being chosen by the randomizer in multiple drawings, that's also okay with me.

With that out of the way, let's get to it and get some winners!

Speaking of winners, if you've made it this far into the post you should know that this is going to be one of those posts where I select a random commenter as a winner for the contest.  Good luck.

First up:  One random bracket entry is a winner.

We actually ended up with about 25% more participants than I had set as a goal so I'm going to have TWO winners our of the 25 brackets that were submitted.  I'm going to use random.org to pick two numbers between 1 and 25 and then simply count down the current standings until I reach the each number.  (Note: If a #3 is drawn which is "my" spot, it actually will go to the #26 bracket thus why I'm only drawing numbers between 1-25.)

Here's a screenshot of the random.org drawing:

Counting down, we find the #9 bracket belongs to NICK VOSSBRINK and the #12 bracket belongs to TREVOR P.  Both Nick and Trevor are our first two winners and both will be drafting in the final prize giveaway once everything is said and done!

Next up:  One random contest promoter is a winner.

I asked for people to promote my contest and help get the word out.  In the end, eleven people did just that so I've entered all 11 into a random.org list and hit randomize 3 times with the top name earning a spot in the prize draft:

Congratulations to CARD JUNK who joins Nick and Trevor as prize drafters.

Finally, we get one more random winner out of all of the people who voted on my 6/10/2020 blog post.  We had 17 people vote on that particular post so once again I entered all of the eligible names into random.org and hit submit (this time 6 times which was determined by the roll of a die on my desk).

Congratulations to Padrographs!  

That gives us four winners already for the contest with plenty more to come (including our grand prize winner which will be whoever has the best bracket at the end of the competition).  I will continue to have random posts serve as additional chances for entry for prizes so keep those comments/votes coming.  

Speaking of prizes, I'm slowly rolling those out as well - a glance back through my archives should allow you to find the first five but now it's time to take a look at Prize #6.

That's a complete set (cards 1-50) of the 2011 Topps Town insert set found in the flagship Topps set. 

And let's show off one more prize, Prize #7:

That's a 2015 Fernando Rodney Snow Camo parallel #54/99 on the back of the card.

Congratulations to all of our winners so far, and if you haven't won yet don't worry as there will be more ways to win coming up.  Be sure to read my blog regularly (and carefully)!

That does it for the latest batch of updates for the contest.  The next round of voting will go live Monday morning at 8:00 AM when the first region of our bracket gets underway!