Allen & Ginter Insert Overview Series #95

Set: 2010 Allen & Ginter This Day in History

            Total Cards: 75

            Stated Odds: 1 per pack

Bubba’s Derived Odds: 21/24

           # of Hobby Boxes Needed to Obtain Set: 3.57

Favorite (Owned) Card:

Eventually a Brave was going to get featured for one of these insert sets.  This just happens to be one of the better photos from the set.  I also am a big fan of Chipper Jones (surprise?).  I really won't go into much more detail about this card in particular as I'll talk more about the set below, but I will mention the fact that Topps decided to write all the numbers in 150 million on this card.  Being myself, I enjoyed that.

Notes and Comments:

Bleh.  This set makes me puke.  Yet another large insert set featuring baseball's star players, this set wasn't used as a "dummy insert" like the sets from 2006-08 so it isn't as thick, but it is just as bad.  Topps went straight into reverse mode after a decent 2009 baseball insert set; they took a typical Ginter-esque picture of a ballplayer and put it next to some old-fashion paperboy??? 

I suppose the cards aren't that horrible individually, but as a group, they are simply unbearable.  These are not baseball cards.  They almost remind me of the countless insert sets that Topps put out in 2007 that were all identical to each other… one of them was that A-Rod Road to 500 set in which all the cards were the same except for this giant number on the card.  Here… I’ll even show you a picture of what my binder of this crap set looks like:

Just an eye-sore.

The only redeeming quality of this set is the way Topps deviated from its super-standard card back.  This was one of the first years that Topps did this for Allen & Ginter and I really appreciate it.  I’m not a huge fan of fancy borders on the fronts of cards, but I’m all for it on the backs, and this set is no exception.  I love the border and especially the title text that Topps used for the card backs of this set.

I could take or leave most of the actual flavor text as I think they could’ve been much more creative with historic dates.  They seemed to grasp at straws for some of these dates which seems very strange to me as quick internet searches of random specific dates yields information out the wazoo.

Take the featured card of Chipper Jones... April 24th.  Topps went with the founding of the Library of Congress... kinda bland???  This site has the following other options that would all have been way more interesting:

• 1^st AL baseball game
• Trojan Horse (traditional date… but who cares)
•  J. Slocum completes boat trip around the world in an 11m boat
• …and many more, take a gander!

Arbitrary Rating (out of 100): 14

% of Set Completed: 98.6%

Missing Cards: TDH-17 Joe Mauer (bleh... barely even care)

Extra Cards:  Too many.  Can I burn them???  Anyone actually want them?