Tis the Season makes me jolly

OK, I'm not the kind of person that you'd normally describe as "jolly"...most often I'd say a more fitting word would be morose. But hey, when you get some cards from a gifting program called Tis the Season, what other post title is possible?

Jedi Jeff had a program called Tis the Season around Christmas time (naturally) and some life got in the way, but he hit up my PO Box with a package of cards that did, indeed, bring a smile to me.

There was some NASCAR but the majority of the package was Olympic cards. As you know, I am a huge Olympics fan. I've completed the 2014 and 2016 sets, as I did boxes of both of them. But I had not completed the 2012 set, which was the first Modern Topps Olympic set. I did not do a box of the set, so it remained incomplete. That..is not something I can say anymore, as the cards from Jeff completed the set!
I even discovered two cards that may be unreported variations. The scans of two of the cards on the Trading Card Database showed the Olympic rings, but my copies show the Paralympic logo.

Tucker Dupree was the first card I noticed it on, because it was the last card I needed to complete my set (100 cards, the largest Topps Olympic set)

I soon discovered that my Kari LaRaine Miller card also had the Paralympic logo.

Here's a card with the Olympic rings for comparison.

I need to get out my collection of the set I got when new and check the other Paralympians. Unfortunately Topps messed with the photos of every single card. But being literally the only option, we just have to accept it.

There were examples of all three parallels, as well- Gold, Silver and Bronze. Bronze is the most common, but Gold and Silver seem to be about equally common to each other.

That's Bronze, Gold and Silver, in order.

Some inserts were represented too, but this set was not big on inserts and I only scanned one of them.

The big deal, though, is that I completed the base set, which means that I have now completed all 4 Topps Olympic sets, counting the 1983 set which I have complete but don't count as part of my collection yet- I have not looked at all the cards, so they don't count until I do- so hopefully it actually IS complete. I do have a horrible track record of buying a hand collated set and missing cards. For $5 I felt it was worth the risk.

Now, the NASCAR. Most people would probably have led off with the NASCAR, considering that this card was included:

And this one:

Two cards SN to 75 and one of them being an autograph. I'm one of those weird people who would rather complete a set than chase hits. But these two weren't all...there were some base cards from Certified, a set that I only had one blaster's worth of cards from previously:

That's my first card of Lupton and my second card of John Hunter Nemechek and Nicole Behar. In fact my one and only blaster, I pulled her autograph as my hit, and I am always happy to add cards from Winston West and Busch North, or whatever they call them now. I remember when John Hunter Nemechek was born...he was named after his uncle who was the first person to be killed in Truck series history, John Hunter was born just months later, in 1997. You may recall last year I was quite surprised to find out that John had gotten a card of his own in 1996 and I wasn't aware of it, until I got it. There were some Cup guys too but I would rather focus on the up and coming drivers here.

There were also some cards from 2016 Prizm, and 2008 Stealth Retail. That's not a set I have a lot of, while the Prizm set I've completed and was able to get one new Prizm parallel from this shipment. Here's an example of the 2008 Stealth Retail.

Dario Franchitti is one of a long, long list of open wheel drivers who could not figure out how to handle a car in NASCAR. I'm a fan of his, and was before his half-year attempt at NASCAR, but it did not work well for him. He broke his foot in a wreck and never came back; he ran for Cup Rookie of the Year in 2008. I was hoping he would be more successful than he was, but it was not to be. I believe he suffered a career-ending back injury when he returned to the IndyCar series, which is unfortunate, but it may have been a different driver. I don't keep up with Indy as much as I would like, and to be honest I'm losing some of the NASCAR knowledge I once had, too.

Thanks for the great package of cards, Jeff! Some great stuff here, and I'm thrilled to have all of it.