My Lone Christmas Baseball Card Present!

This Christmas, I didn't ask for much related to baseball cards which is probably why I didn't get much card stuff!  In fact, I only received one baseball card item this year...and it came as a complete surprise from an old friend!

Some of you may recognize the name Joe E. from my Facebook group break page.  Joe is my old high school English teacher (actually, I had him for Newspaper class where I was the Sports Editor of our high school paper).  Anyhow, Joe lives a few blocks away from me so he usually stops by in person to pick up his group break cards. 

A few days ago, he did exactly that...but this time he brought me a gift!  Joe's been big on the Topps Project 2020 set which I have to admit is a pretty cool concept.

The cost of the individual cards seemed to be outside my budget - but Joe decided to surprise me with what is probably the one Project 2020 card that slots nicely into my own collection:

Sorry for the blurry scan, my scanner doesn't like to scan cards encased in plastic!

That's a Ken Griffey, Jr. card designed by artist EFDOT.  This particular card is full of all sorts of Easter eggs but the one that spoke to Joe as far as giving me this card as a gift is that little Nintendo 64 logo on the bottom left corner of the card border.  He knew that I used to play old baseball video games with my dad!  Even better, according to Joe this is the one Griffey card where he is wearing a red cap (so you can pretend it's a Reds cap rather than a Mariners cap).

Many, many thanks to Joe for this cool card.  I love the concept that Topps came up with here...and had Barry Larkin been an included subject I probably would have been much more tempted to join in the fun!  As it is, I'm super happy to be able to add this card to my (rather large) Ken Griffey, Jr. collection - and yes, if I ever do find more of these Project 2020 Griffey cards for cheap, I think I'll try and scoop them up too!

Happy final day of 2020 everyone...I saved this particular card to post today because I wanted to end this terrible year on a positive note.  Here's to hoping that 2021 is much, much better all the way around!  Cheers!