More Big Fun Games, and why I only collect cards

I had the privilege of participating in a couple other Big Fun Games after Gavin's custom-filled blowout.

The first of these was held by John of "Johnny's Trading Spot" fame, and he had a number of terrific goodies at the ready. While the majority of John's items were baseball-related, I (of course) originally picked a number that contained a football prize -- a bronze card of Drew Bledsoe, I think.

While this would no doubt be a fun score for some, I am not a football guy: thus, I spent the next few rounds of the Big Fun Game actually hoping someone would steal my prize. And someone did. I then upped the ante by making a steal of my own for a neat '60s oddball of Dazzy Vance...which was, in turn, stolen from me not long after.

I was disappointed, but not angry -- such ruthlessness is part of the fun of Big Fun Games, after all.

After losing the Vance, I made another steal -- my evil side tends to come out a bit in these Big Fun Games -- this time for a small lot of pink refractors from last year's Donruss Optic.

Once the dust had settled, this was the prize I ended up taking home, and I was darn glad about it. While Optic is a fairly boring set all on its own (basically a poor man's Topps Chrome), the presence of pink borders spices it up quite a bit.

Because, and I cannot stress this enough:

PINK

IS

ALWAYS

AN

AWESOME

BORDER

COLOR!

I'd have to sit down and actually make the list one day, but pink refractors may well be my favorite type of refractors, and I make no apologies about that. I don't often equate baseball and the color pink together, but they make for darn fine baseball cards.

Another Big Fun Game, another success story.

The last Big Fun Game I joined was run by Oscar of the "All Trade Bait, All The Time" blog.

This time, I ended up with the original prize I'd selected -- no stealing necessary -- and it didn't involve cards at all. I won a pair of figurines: a small statue of a sliding Jackie Robinson, and a bobblehead of the very bobblehead-worthy Tommy Lasorda.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm ecstatic to have won a couple awesome Dodger-centric prizes that I likely would've never seen otherwise living in Chicago and all.

But though the temptation has always been there, I've never thought of myself as much of a figurine collector -- or a collector of pretty much anything else baseball-related besides cards.

There's one simple reason for this: they take up a lot of space, and with all the cards around I don't have much remaining space to play with. I honestly don't know how anyone who doesn't live in a mansion and/or have a card room to themselves collects anything besides cards. 

I did, however, find a good spot for Jackie, on a stand right above my Hoyt Wilhelm SLU figure and '70s RC cans, and next to the BP ball I caught at Wrigley last month.

Tommy went on my other baseball-themed display on my dresser, complete with a cornucopia of all the oversized oddballs and yes, more bobbleheads I own.

While I own several thousand baseball cards, they're all in fairly good order. I can go grab you pretty much anything from any of my binders right now in the span of a few seconds. What you see on my dresser, however, is in absolutely no order at all and has a bit of a haphazard feel to it even though I try to fix up the display on a semi-regular basis.

I'm always happy to receive any figurines people want to give me but, aside from having very little room available, I guess I'm just plain afraid to start collecting them. Perhaps I'm just paranoid, but I feel like they're the last thing preventing me from crossing into hoarder territory.

I'll stick to cards for now.