2018 Allen & Ginter Box 4-8 Recap

Boxes one through three were pretty good to me. Since I got my case a day later than I thought I would, I actually didn't have time to open and really appreciate the rest of the boxes until this past week. Here we are though with all the fun highlights from the middle portion of the case! I stopped at box number eight because I'm reserving my historically lucky box number nine for Ginta-Cuffs. Hopefully that'll work out again!

Clearly, these were not the only two blacks minis from these five boxes as you get two to three per box, but these were definitely the highlights. A far cry from the first three boxes, but still happy with these.

It's not often that I highlight A&G back minis, cause I kinda hate them, but when you pull both of your favorite team's premier rookies in the same box, you get a bit excited.

Skipping straight to the autos here with nothing super special. Two rookie autos is pretty nice with Bader getting a significant amount of playing time this year and Fried being one of the Braves better pitching prospects.

Can't say I was all that excited about this Matt Olson auto, but I also don't think I've seen this guy even take an at-bat. The A's aren't a team we see much of up here in New England too often. That said, this kid is both young, and seems to have quite some power.

The first of (probably) two rips cards supposedly contained in the case features Evan Longoria. I'll be ripping this on video later this week and hopefully we'll see something good pop out.

Here's the last of the 'special' hits from these five boxes with the Altuve framed relic. In the past few years, you can pretty much expect to hit two boring full-sized relics along with one other hit per box. Whether that hit ends up being a rip card, auto, or framed relic varies among boxes, but that's generally how these boxes map out and these five were no exception.

Speaking of boring full-sized relics, here they are! Not too much to write home about. Also, notice anything? These are almost all baseball players with Paige Spiranac being the only exception! That's a bit frustrating!

My first Brooklyn back mini of the case is a Washington National. Bleh.

This is super cool! Here's Topps' mystery gag for Ginter this year. You can almost see it if you look really close at the border on this mini, but it's slightly textured. In fact, the entire back of the card is slightly textured and that's really the only way you can tell that you just pulled something special; you feel it. 

This mini glows in the dark! From what I can gather, these seem to be roughly case hits, and even though they aren't actually numbered, they're probably limited to around roughly ten copies per subject. I'm relatively happy with the Stugotz pull, as he's one of the few overblown radio hosts that I slightly appreciate. Just the fact that he is an ESPN employee that is highly recognized makes me happy as well.

Finally, one of these boxes was a hot box where every base card in the box was instead a glossy parallel. We got the two hyped Braves rookies again!

Hey, rookie hot box! :D No Ohtani unfortunately though. 

These cards are interesting. As I mentioned, they're glossy in nature, not foil like last year (which I happen to have liked a lot better). The background is adjusted to this dark gray color, which is alright I guess, but I like the look of the standard base card better. The rarity and completionist in me is truly the only thing that attracts me to these... and yes, I will be building this set, so send me your extras. :p

My two favorite 'objects' from this year's set featured on glossy parallels. These are far cries from the inanimate objects we've seen in past sets which I'm slightly angry at.

Finally my favorite player alongside the game's best player! I was so sad when Newcomb missed out on a no-no last night by one strike. You could tell that he was utterly exhausted coming off that mound... I guess 134 pitches will do that to you. Of course, Winkler comes in and has to spoil the shutout as well.

Not too bad for five boxes. Pretty "standard" if you will, but I certainly not upset at the results! More to come!