We just got back from our trip to Chattanooga, TN! The trip was awesome and the folks are extremely friendly down that way!

A few months ago, we got an email from Malcolm Ramey about a donation of about 70,000 cards and he was trying to figure out a way to get them to us without paying a HUGE shipping fee; so we asked him to hold onto them for a little bit and we would make the 5 hour drive down there.

I asked him to wait a month or so because we DON’T go anywhere without taking cards with us! I did some calling and got a few donations set up and then got the cards ready and we headed down there on our 9th anniversary!

The first place we dropped off a donation was to the Children’s Home; the lady was extremely friendly and a few kids held the door open for us as we took in 6 huge boxes! We also dropped off a box for the folks at Big Brothers and Big Sisters so they could pick them up on Monday. Our trip got moved from Friday to Saturday and they didn’t have anyone in the office. That was a great showing that those folks work together and take care of the kids in Chattanooga! Very impressive!

After we left there, we headed just down the road to drop off some boxes to the Ronald McDonald House. The guy there was also very friendly!

After we made our drop offs, we contact a young man named Malcolm Ramey; well, we called his mom because he was unavailable due to business. We met the young lady and she was super friendly too! We talked to her for a few and explained the program and then headed out.

From Lawrenceburg, KY to Chattanooga, TN is just over 5 hours and we had been up since 4am, so we took our 6 year old out for some lunch and then the Tennessee Aquarium! After that, we headed to the hotel to take a little name, then we did some shopping and then hit the pool!

It was a great overnight trip; the family had a blast, we donated 92, 875 cards to kids and picked up around 70,000 cards!

The above pictures are from the awesome donation from Mr. Ramey! These cards will be going into our donation that will put us over our 1 million goal in December!

** Same people may wonder why we go through all of the trouble; why couldn’t the person just donate his own cards to the kids in his area. There are actually several reasons. One, we send any card worth over $25 back to the donor, so that is a little bonus because we don’t want to rip anyone off. Another reason is to the help the charities; most charities don’t have the man power to accept a 70,000 card donation of just boxes of cards; they don’t really have an easy way to store them or hand them out. We process the cards and package them up so the charities can simply hand a baggie to a kid. Also the cards are pre-counted and sealed in baggies which keeps them safe from dust or water. One of the last reasons is, a lot of card collectors don’t just focus on sports cards; we’ve found Playboy cards and MMA cards and we don’t give those to the kids.