2016 Blowout forums purchase: a super nice letter

I'm not sure how I forgot to mention this at some point in the past 10 days, but January 1 this year marked this here blog's fifth birthday!  That's right, Too Many Manninghams (a name I've kept the whole time, as opposed to TMG/V) is

We'll miss you, Jabrill!

I was too busy to throw up a celebratory post that day and then just kind of let it fall through the cracks.  Anyway, five years and not even 700 posts.  Thanks as always to all of you who have read and/or continue to read!

So, as I mentioned over on TMV this evening, after tonight's posts I'm all caught up with trades and purchases from 2016 except for my Black Friday COMC stuff, which I'll be showing off in future posts soon.  One last order of business, though:  my final purchase of 2016.

Lots of Blowout forum members busted boxes and cases between Black Friday and Christmas, and one such member caught my attention by opening up some 2008 Leaf Limited football.  As you all know, a bunch of my Michigan football favorites hail from that year, and I was hoping he'd pull something interesting.

Mario Manningham 2008 Leaf Limited Lettermen 'A' patch auto (#02/10)

Jackpot!  I was thrilled to see this Manningham, a case hit, in the scans found in the thread, and made a casual inquiry as to its availability.  He originally asked for a lot more than I was comfortable with, and I told him my absolute maximum was in the $10-$15 range; to my surprise, he agreed to let me have it for $15.

I'm excited because, though this is one of those dreaded "event-worn" cards, the letter patch is from the actual name plate instead of being manufactured.  While the latter are totally fine in my book, there's no beating the former, especially when they're limited to as many copies as there are letters in a player's last name (though Manningham, at 10, is relatively bountiful!).  A top notch hit like this on a great Panini design is always a win in my book.

Since my most recent post also featured a Manningham hit (thanks, Fuji!) you may recall that he was sitting in fifth place in my football collection with 62 hits.  Well, he'll be #5 (a big number today!) for a bit longer since 63 cards still puts him shy of Mike Hart in fourth with 65.  That's not enough Marios no matter what this blog is called!

It was fun to close out a great year for collecting (if for nothing else--good riddance, 2016!) with one of the best cards I own of this blog's namesake.  Hopefully 2017 has more great stuff in store, and I have some insider information in the form of a couple of trade packages that lead me to believe that'll be the case.  Stay tuned for those, Black Friday loot, and more, even if it takes me another five years!