Small-Sized September Swap

The third of my September trades was inevitable.  If you mention Allen & Ginter and read blogs at all, I would hope you would think of three people: myself, Democratic Roadkill, and Nachos Grande.  If I'm missing someone who has that same passion for Ginter as we do, please let me know... because it probably means I haven't talked to him/her and I'd definitely want to!

In any case, this trade features cards from Chris of Nachos Grande.  He always opens a decent number of hobby boxes every year of this product and will chase the complete set down in addition to sometimes adding some extraneous subsets to his goals.

I usually do something very similar, so its a natural fit that we trade with each other two or three times a year.  Chris was kind enough to send me a good number of regular backed minis inching me closer to my goal of completing the set.

He also sent me a smattering of black bordered minis which are going towards an "Across the Years" frankenset of black bordered minis.  I'm still slowly working on exactly what that will look like, so I'm not going to explain any further at the moment.

Both of these black border designs feature that artistic design I learned about way back in 4th grade... tiling or tessellations.  I don't remember.  All I know is that when you scan the cards next to each other on the scanner bed, they come out matching almost like puzzle pieces.

The real gem of the package however, were these minis.  2008 Topps Allen & Ginter's minis.  McCutchen... in 2008 you ask?  Well... no, these are not actual Topps products.  These are custom minis from the Munnatawket Bat Company, and Chris overloaded me with a huge stack of these!

I have received a few of these from Chris in the past as he usually uses them a fillers or bonuses in his trades.  I actually requested a few of these in this trade because I enjoy them so much.  The maker of these cards includes modern baseball players (mostly super-stars) along with a plethora of non-sports figures like the above.  If it were up to me, this is the kind of thing I wish Topps would feature more often instead of the recent trend towards comedians and actors.

A recently inducted Hall of Famer next to a future Hall of Famer... yes please.  I actually received so many of these cards from Chris that I think I'm going to need to put together a want list for the whole set.  Just from some of the cards I've received recently, I think the creator of these cards is constantly adding to the set, so it might be a somewhat difficult set build.

Chris didn't stop there though!  He sent me four numbered minis as well!  To be honest, I think its a bit gimmicky to number a custom created set like this, but I appreciate the effort and the alternate back is pretty cool too.  

I'm honestly not too sure how widespread these customs really are.  I know (or at least I'm pretty sure) Chris gets them direct from the creator, and he seems to be the one that spreads these cards around the blogging world, but I also used to see these fairly frequently on eBay or other such outlets.  Its very possible that Topps shut this production down similar to how they recently reached out to defgav and shut his customs down.  That would make me sad... heck, it already makes me sad.

Thanks for the great trade Chris!