Million Card Givaway

This is courtesy of the Beckett Blog:

By most accounts, Topps‘ Million Card Giveaway has been a resoundingly popular promotion this year with countless baseball fans and collectors from the past and present redeeming their codes for their MCG account, trading (electronically) their cardboard like the days of old.

However, I noticed something in the official rules that I wonder if many a collector noticed. (I hadn’t even after redeeming more than 30 codes.) Once a promotion’s deadline hits in March 2011, undelivered cards in your account vanish.

As in your mom threw them out electronically.

Here’s what the rules say:

Warning: Giveaway ends 03/15/2011. After 03/15/2011, Option (iii) will no longer be available and all Accounts will be closed by Sponsor. Once closed, the contents of Accounts automatically revert to Sponsor and Accountholder waives and releases any and all property rights in Account and its contents without compensation of any kind. Participants may not receive any further notification prior to Account closure on 03/15/2011.

Delivery of the cards in one’s account costs $2.92 for the first card and 53 cents for each additional card claimed in the same sitting.

That means we all now have a deadline to decide whether we really want our 2007 Xavier Nadys along with our 1967 Chris Zacharys and 1966 Ron Swobodas. For the most part, the promotion yielded many a card I already have and probably don’t need, but for me anything before 1970 might need to be claimed. (And, of course, if you pulled some money card, the answer to the question is obviously “yes, it needs claimed.”)

It should be obvious that Topps can’t manage its MCG database forever — and of course the code cards themselves do have a 2011 expiration date — but the aspect of having an account to store a virtual collection is something that many collectors probably enjoy more than then hassles of digging through cardboard boxes to find one of their cards.

I’m just not sure how many MCG collectors — even ones who have entered hundreds of codes — know about that deadline yet.

This item is the first step. Pass the link along to those who you know use the MCG.

Count me as one of those who didn't know about the deadline. I don't have many cards in my account but do have a few that I wouldn't mind keeping. Guess I'm gonna have to break down and have some sent to me. Thanks again to Beckett for pointing out the expiration date