Nachos Grande's Not-So-Secret Santa Sign-Ups!! (Please Read!)

With the holiday season approaching quickly, I've been tossing around some different ideas to spread holiday cheer throughout the blogs.  My first plan was to try to coordinate some sort of "secret Santa" idea where I get a list of people, randomize the assignments, and then each person is supposed to buy for one other person (and if all goes well, everyone involved will give a gift and get a gift).  The main problem with that plan is that not everyone will be able to offer up things that their assigned person may want.  The other problem is that it's quite time consuming on my end as all of the interactions between participants would need to be kept secret (hence the "secret Santa" name).  

Long story short, I don't think I have the time or energy for that idea - and I wouldn't know what to do if someone out there didn't keep up his or her end of the deal, no one wants to be part of a Secret Santa exchange and end up with nothing.  That's not fun!

Therefore, I'm proposing the following:  Nacho Grande's Not-So-Secret Santa 2022

The basic idea here is that I'll be the one sending everyone gifts and then, in return, each person who I send to can send me something in return.  I thought this might be fun because I wouldn't necessarily be looking for baseball cards in return (don't get me wrong, I'd love anything off of my want list but I also recognize that my want list is full of way too many inserts and short prints - the bane of a set collector)!

My hope is to create custom gift packages for each person who joins in the Not-So-Secret Santa.  I'm going to try and tailor each box to the individual (uses the information you provide on the sign-up form - see below).  I've got a few goodies stashed away already for certain long-time bloggers (so hopefully they'll sign up) but I've got a lot of ideas to make this fun for everyone.

Here's how this will work:

Step 1:  Sign-up using this short Google forms page.  I'll need your mailing address (US mailing addresses only for now, sorry but shipping costs outside the US are out of hand).  The form also gives you a place to link to your want list and a place to type in any additional interests.  Sign-ups should be completed no later than November 11 to give me enough time to get gift boxes in the mail prior to Christmas!

Step 2:  Wait for your Not-So-Secret Santa gift to arrive from me. I hope to mail out most gifts by the end of November or early December.  Your gift should contain baseball cards plus the potential of other things depending on your responses on the sign-up form.

Step 3:  Prepare a gift for me and mail it to me!  You can base what you send back to me on what I sent you.  I don't expect to send the same exact "value" to each person - in large part because of the limitations of my own collection but also some people will have much a much wider range of interests as compared to somebody else!  I also am not worrying about someone trying to return "equal value" to me.  This is, after all, a holiday gift exchange and it's meant to be fun, not stressful!  While I am happy to have any of the cards on my want list listed on my TCDB profile, I'd also be interested in the following items:

• Local favorite foods from where you live (I especially like salty snacks much more than sweets).  I also enjoy cooking so anything local that might fit under that category would be great.
• Anything LEGO.  I can use and enjoy all things LEGO.  New sets, loose pieces, sets from your childhood you no longer want, doesn't really matter to me.  Only LEGO brand though because I make own custom LEGO City table with my son and we are trying to keep everything official LEGO so as to make sure everything will line up correctly as we build everything!
• Disc golf discs (especially any discs from Dynamic Discs or Westside Discs)
• Board games (see my Boardgamegeek profile).  This includes card games as well.
• Particularly good books you have read and enjoyed.  You can find my Goodreads profile here to get a feel for the kind of books I like.
• Unopened baseball card packs, any year, any brand.  I use unopened packs for my group breaks but also as fun little rewards/prizes for my son.

Things I'm not interested in receiving as part of the Not-So-Secret Santa:

• Random Reds cards (or random cards in general).  Space is an issue for my collection right now so I'm trying to basically only collect specific sets (plus Barry Larkin cards).
• Bobbleheads or other plastic figurines.  Same reasoning as above, display space is at a premium for me.

The fine print:

I reserve the right to close sign-ups early if the number of interested people exceeds my time/budget/capabilities to mail before Christmas.  If necessary, preference will go to those who signed up earlier as well as those with whom I've dealt with in the past (either via trades, email messages, or long time blog readers/commenters).  Signing up via the form does not guarantee a gift, spaces are limited as is what I can potentially send to someone.  If I can't make assemble a reasonable gift worth sending based on someone's preferences, then I'll have to exclude that person from the gift exchange.