Upper Deck Victory Prizes - #27

It's been awhile since our last free card giveaway and this one was worth the wait. Speaking of long waits, our gear from Upper Deck came in the mail and we are SO pumped. Check out this episode to see our free boxes of cards, 2009 NFL rookie autographed football and other incredible gear.

Here at Opening Day Cards we give stuff away, so as always the packs of cards we open on this episode are up for grabs! Request a card each and we'll send it to you in the mail at no cost. Seriously there's no catch.

A big congrats to Roy Halladay today. Another perfect game this year, MLB 2010 it's going to be a special season. Enjoy your Memorial Day Weekend. Thanks to all those representing America overseas and here in the States we're thankful for your service. #proudtobeanamerican

A Big THANK YOU!

When we sat down just over a month ago to start a baseball card blog we were excited, excited like little kids opening our first packs. We wanted to share that feeling of opening a fresh pack with anybody who had a few minutes to waste. Better yet, we wanted to give those cards away because getting mail rocks. Getting a letter from Grandma is cool but getting free baseball cards in the mail, well that will make your week. The response to our amateur effort has been huge. We’ve made new friends, we’ve gotten boxes of cards, jerseys, packs, and thank you cards in the mail. Best of all we get to talk baseball & baseball cards with awesome people.

A week ago we found ourselves in a social media “best blog” contest. We reached out to our fans, to our families, to our old high school and college baseball teams. We kept pumping out content for our blog, we kept giving away baseball cards and we even found time to swing by Fenway to be part of the #openingday hooplah - sox win! We also chose to stay out of the drama. From day one there was buzz about whether or not such a recent blog should be included in the voting and there was even a YouTube video questioning whether or not our “television show” was even a blog.

We kept our heads down and stuck to our social strategy, heck we both work in social media in Silicon Valley. We had viewers of our blog contact us with strategies that included getting their little league baseball teams to vote, getting their families to vote and getting their Facebook friends to vote. The support has been awesome, and honestly that’s what social media is about – connecting one-on-one with real people. We started by finding people to vote for us, we energized our most loyal fans and we didn’t waste our time trying to figure out how to game the system or belittle the competition. We saw some pretty awesome activity: tons of comments and tweets, over a hundred cards requested last week and even a few sent to us (thanks!), and ultimately over 1000 votes. Thanks to all of you!

We’re thankful for the opportunity UD created which has driven a lot of buzz about the card community online. Getting the most votes doesn’t mean we’re the best baseball card blog. It means we put together a social media strategy we are proud of and worked hard for votes one by one. We didn’t even know you could vote everyday, we just hustled and discovered that there were about a dozen of our fans who decided they were going to bust even harder than we were. For us this competition has been about establishing a deeper relationship with our viewers. You guys are the judge of our success.

We know we're not like other card blogs. We don’t know cards like many of these other blogs do. We’re approaching things from a different angle; we’re shaking it up.

Other blogs have accused us and belittled what we do, and we’ve found it a bit silly. We focused on baseball and baseball cards, we focused on having fun with our viewers and we focused on opening day. We’re still giving out free baseball cards, we’re still spitting sunflower seeds and we still have a ton to learn.

We’re sorry it became necessary to address all the drama and accusations with a written post. But after reading a few things that were said about us, we felt compelled to say something.

Thank you to everyone who cast a vote for Opening Day Cards and a big thanks to some crazy fans out there who hunted down voters for us. Enough with the banter we’ll be back with more baseball & free baseball cards to celebrate tomorrow.

Hang onto your baseball caps there’s a TON of excitement coming your way from www.openingdaycards.com.

Thanks!

Chris & Joe

Best Blog Button

We've been nominated for Best Blog in the Upper Deck Social Media Awards, thanks for the nomination, we're geeked!


If you like this blog and want to vote for us, click this button:






Thanks to Randy Medina for the sweet logo!

Upper Deck Awards

So there's been a decent amount of buzz about these Upper Deck Social Media Awards.

Chris and I are honored to have been nominated for Best Blog.

When we first started this thing we weren't out to win any awards, just the hearts and time of passionate baseball fans like yourself.

We thought we were on to something when we first received a piece of mail: two baseball cards sent to us from a fan.

It's always fun to get mail, especially when its not a bill. But opening up that mail box and seeing a yellow padded envelope or a stamped letter is even better. And when we opened it up and there were baseball cards inside...we flipped!

We love baseball, and we love baseball cards. For us, its not always about finding the most expensive card or collecting the whole set. We don't even know which cards are the most expensive. We geek out over opening a pack and making your day by mailing you the cards you love. We know what it feels like, don't act like it's no big deal. Chris almost wet himself the first time we got a card in the mail.

Since we started we have given away almost all the cards we have opened, and that won't change. If you think that makes us a pretty cool blog, we'd love your vote:

VOTE HERE

If we win, all the cards are going to you. The autographed football is going to get auctioned to charity.

Even if you don't vote for us, thanks for tuning in. Check out a video. Request a card. We'd love for you to open your mailbox next week and see an envelope with a stamp and some handwriting on it, and a small piece of cardboard heaven inside. That's assuming you aren't at the ballpark, because next week is Baseball Season!