Coal in my stocking

So just as a reminder, if you're curious what today's holiday gifts are about, you can read about them in my Special Edition Assets post from a couple of weeks ago.  Spoiler warnings on that post are now OFF.  ;-)

How CCP chose to implement giving these assets, I really really like a lot: everyone seems to have received one Genolution implant, one special edition ship, another big pile of snowballs, and then seven items mixed between the Special Edition Assets and the New Eden Open "trading cards".  +50 points to CCP on that.  That's a really fun way of doing this.  Sadly, between my four subscribed accounts, I did not receive either of the NEO teams that had Rote Kapelle members on them.  Ah well, maybe I'll buy them.  Interestingly, there appear to be zero trading cards for The HUNS team in New Eden.  Whoops.

EDIT (20/Dec/2012): HUNS trading cards began appearing in Jita at 21:30 today, so either a new mix of gifts was created that included this card or it was just an amazing coincidence that there were literally zero of these cards for sale in Jita until then.

I did receive both Special Edition Assets that I particularly wanted: a Postcard from Poitot and an Animal Medical Expert.  Yay!  I didn't receive any of the new Catalysts, which was the ship I really would have asked for but I guess almost nobody did.

That brings me to the second most interesting thing about the way these gifts were distributed: they appear random, but they're not.  Two of my accounts received:

• Tank of Honor;
• Genolution Core Augmentation CA-1;
• Model of a Fighter;
• NEO trading cards for: EFS, Expendables, Goggle Wearing Internet Crime Fighters, Why Dash;
• Sarum Magnate;
• Snowball CXIV; and,
• The Mini Monolith.

And I've heard from several other players that encountered similar situations, with different mixes.  The chances of that happening randomly are astronomical.  So there were specific mixes of gifts created and it was those mixes that were distributed randomly.  But when creating the mixes, I think the person whose job it was to create them (a) didn't create enough; and (b) forgot to include a HUNS trading card in one of the mixes.  I think I'll leave my second set of the above gifts unredeemed for a few days.  CCP, if you want to change it to a new mix that includes a HUNS trading card, I won't stop you.  ;-)

All in all though, very cool idea!  I hope everyone enjoys their gifts.

First most interesting thing about the gifts?  The first set I redeemed had one unit of Carbon in it mixed with the other items.

That's right, boys and girls: CCP put a lump of coal in my stocking.