Dial back to Christmas 2005. My wife and I are in Connecticut for our traditional holiday with the family and as usual, there are various odds and ends to finish up at the last minute. Our Christmas Eve-Day scrambling lands us at a Walgreens where any collector in his right mind would take a stroll down the toy isle in hopes of making a great find.

My search of the pegs turned up fruitless, but while walking the center isle I noticed that one of the floor bins had a cardboard tray filled with cars sitting on a bunch of other random items. My initial search through the tray found nothing until I realized that there were actually two trays stacked together. The bottom tray revealed a Flashsider TH - my one and only TH find all year! What a great way to start off the Christmas holiday!

Scan forward to Christmas 2006 and my wife and I find ourselves in the same groundhog day like pattern. We are just about finished making the last minute rounds and we decide to get a few more things at that very same Walgreens. As I pull into the parking space I reminded my wife how I found the TH here last year and mention how cool it would be to find another just one year later.

My hopes for a repeat dramatically declined as the pegs were as bare as the Playstation 3 inventory at Best Buy. I helped my wife gathered the items we had intended to get and proceeded down the bargain isle to the registers. Right before exiting the isle a hint of blue cardboard caught my eye and my hope was instantly renewed as I spotted the same type of tray that yielded TH gold just one year prior. I placed my items on the floor and started to dig through the fairly disheveled bin. Based on the unorganized condition of the bin I got the feeling that it had been picked through before, but something kept me digging and looking at each and every card in the bunch.

Just then the same rush of giddy excitement I had felt in 2005 returned as I pulled out a Corvette C6 TH! Was it luck..? Pure coincidence..? Or maybe a Christmas miracle…?!! - Who knows - but one thing is for sure - I’ll be hitting that same Walgreens on Christmas Eve-Day 2007!!