Peter Pan Delivers Some Cards... Oh Wait... That's Neverland.

These two cards showed up in the mail last week.  These purple beauties have put me as close to the halfway mark on this set as you can get.  I now own 31 of the 63 Ginter framed mini relics.  However, this was not all that came in this particular trade package.

Jeroen, of the blog The Dutch Card Guy also kindly included a few cards featuring players from his country's own soccer league, the Dutch Eredivisie.  I'm sorely looking forward to the release of this year's soccer cards and am very much hoping that they look halfway decent.  I haven't been thrilled with the design of many soccer products in the past (Topps, Panini, or otherwise), but increasing US interest in the sport may perhaps spark increased production quality of a collectible product.

This particular design isn't terrible, but I wouldn't say it's excellent either.  The card number in the bottom right-hand corner is really out of place, but otherwise, I could probably deal with this design.  I think one of the major problems with soccer cards is that finding unique and well focus photos can be a daunting task.  Many of the cards I've seen (aside from goalie cards) contain this very standard shot of a player simply dribbling the ball downfield.

Jeroen didn't stop with soccer though.  Oh no... he knew my interest in the Atlanta Braves pitching staff, and he himself happened to have a PC of none other than Mr. Tom Glavine.  He kindly sent me an absolutely stunning patch/auto of the great lefty numbered to 25!

I also received a handful of black minis for a project that I think I'm going to embark upon in the near future (read: when I get around to it).  I think I'm going to try and take the best player/world champion from any given card slot in the past 10 years of Ginter and try and collect the black mini version of those cards.  For example, slot #85 is almost guaranteed to be occupied by this year's Kris Bryant card.  I happen to have this card already so we're off to a great start!

Last, but certainly not least, Jeroen sent me one of his most prized cards.  Apparently he pulled this from a pack himself back in 2011 and to this day is "the best pull in [his] baseball card collecting history."  I am quite excited to be the new owner of this headline autograph for 2011 Allen & Ginter.

I present to you: Manny Paquiao

Allen & Ginter Insert Overview Series #82

I haven't gotten to do one of these posts in a while, but I absolutely plan on continuing this series.  I'm not sure how I'm going to fit the brand new 2015 cards into the mix yet.  I haven't rated them or done the odds math/spreadsheet work for them yet (though it really isn't that hard).

In any case, I've had this particular post sitting in my drafts half complete for quite some time now mostly waiting and hoping that I could complete the set through one of my many recent Ginter trades.  That was not to be.  Instead I get to look foolish for not having one of the easier (and probably one of my preferred) insert sets finished.

...and I call myself a Ginter fan.


Set: 2010 Allen & Ginter Baseball Sketches

            Total Cards: 15

            Stated Odds: 1:10

Bubba’s Derived Odds: still 1:10

           # of Hobby Boxes Needed to Obtain Set: 6.25

Favorite (Owned) Card:

This card wins this set on so many different levels.  Not only is it a great picture of a great catch, but it comes in probably one of the 2 memorable games (at least for me) in the 2009 season.

1. Buerhle's perfecto
2. The one game playoff between the Twins and Tigers.

The rest of the season was complete nonsense.  Colorado was the only halfway interesting team to make the postseason and the Phillies and Yankees reached the World Series... bleh.

Even with being off in college for some of the season with no TV (let alone cable), I still vividly remember this game.  I was at home for it (July 23rd) so I got to watch it happen.  DeWayne Wise will forever be remembered for this play, and this alone.  He was a career .228 hitter and played very sparingly, but my, what a catch.

Notes and Comments:

As far as the actual card set is concerned, this is the first of four of these similar type sets all labeled "Baseball Highlights".  They certainly were not all created equally.  Allen & Ginter had these sets between the years 2009 and 2012 and they all featured events of note from the past year in baseball.  Not very original, but probably forgivable if carried out properly.

In my opinion, the 2010 set was quite well done.  Even working with a sub-par data set (in a generally terrible baseball season), the cards look really good.  I'm not entirely sure if the cards are actual drawings or simply pictures that are rendered electronically to look like drawings.  Either way, they did a great job with these (and their 2009 counterparts).

Here's the other thing I really like about this set.  These nameplates.

A lot of the beauty of these comes from the 2010 standard Allen & Ginter color scheme which is (surprise!) blue.

The base cards admittedly go a bit overboard on the blue, but the slight blue touch throughout the border of this insert set really makes it for me.  It makes the pastel-type color theme work really well and the entire set ends up pleasing to look at as a whole.

Arbitrary Rating (out of 100): 80

Click link above for complete up-to-date ratings

% of Set Completed: 93%

Missing Cards: AGHS10 (So close!!!  Help a guy out???)

Extra Cards: AGHS2, AGHS12

Cards on Cards Yield some Braves on Cards

Oh, do we have a smorgasbord of cards to show off today.  Kerry of Cards on Cards contacted me about having some Bowman set building help for me and that sparked trade talk.  Kerry also sent me some other set building help (a couple Ginter cards and some Topps Chrome).  However, I particularly enjoyed the big ol' team bag full of Braves that he included.

I'm not very much of a team collector...

I enjoy parallels, weird cards, and numbered nonsense just as much as the next collector.  When I pull these kinds of things, I enjoy it even more when the cards feature Braves.  So when Kerry sent me a bunch of Braves that barely contained any base cards of any set, I was extremely happy.

I scanned all my favorites and plopped them on this blog.  I left them in the order that they're named which happens to generally by player's last name, so we'll run with that.

Unfortunately, that puts one of my favorite cards (above) near the top of this post.  This is simply an absolutely phenomenal picture that Topps chose for this card.  I love that Heyward is like "Dude, Mike... you don't need to jump for this... I'm all over it."

Ok... so Kerry did send me a couple "base" cards.  In fact, I'm pretty sure he sent me quite a few, but when they come from sets like Bowman's Best and Sweet Spot not many people are readily going to have these sticking around.  I certainly don't.

Full bleeds are awesome.  I kinda miss Upper Deck.

Kerry sent me two of these 2013 Topps Stickers.  They're smaller than normal cards which makes them obnoxious to store.  Because of that I decided to find out if they were actually stickers and tried to peel them.  I couldn't do it.  So I'm not actually sure if its really a sticker or not.  *Frustrated*

I got a relic of a former star in the making... who got fat.  He had so much going for him before his move away from Atlanta.  I still like the card though, which I think is mostly due to the fact the card is purple and numbered out of 75.

Speaking of PURPLE!!!  This is pretty sweet!  Oh, and it's shiny.  People should keep sending me purple cards.  I really like them.

If I remember correctly, this is a 2013 Topps flagship insert?  Apologies if I'm incorrect.  It's a Kimbrel and it's not a base card.  I come from a family that has a wonderfully entertaining habit of sticking out one's tongue when concentrating... like so.  I like it.

More Bowman's Best.  This time the Mad Dog.

The other sticker.  ...that doesn't actually seem to be a sticker.

Another picture of the Yankee traitor.

I probably owned this card at one point in my life, but I tried to rid myself of much of the junk wax that was floating around in my collection.  I can't stand clutter (at least within my baseball card collection), so this card was probably overlooked.  Either way, I have found new appreciation for this card.  The back of this card is particularly entertaining as it describes the odd scorer's decision behind the no-no.

It currently stands as one of eleven combined no-hitters in MLB history.

I get Cardboard in the Morning, and in the Afternoon, it Looks Like This!

Contrary to what my blog seems to suggest, I've been extremely active with my baseball collection over the past month.  I've been making quite a number of trades, though many of them have been coming from outside of the blogging universe.  I haven't posted about many (read: any) of them because they are all strictly for set building and there's only so many things you can do with these types of trades.  Coming up with creative ways to spin them can get fairly difficult.

I decided simply to forgo posting about those trades and instead have been working tirelessly at trying to keep my have/want list accurate.  I have been unsuccessful...

I have, however recently made three trades with fellow bloggers and I do want to try and showcase those a bit because each one of them made my day in all sorts of different ways when I got home to a full mailbox.

Today's trade features cards from Tim of I Love the Smell of Cardboard in the Morning.

This trade took place over two separate envelopes and included a vast quantity of set building needs.  The first envelope featured 40 or so Bowman cards from this year's set, and the second contained a smattering of Bowman, some Topps Chrome, and some random Ginter from across the years.

I took Tim's package down to my scanner and scanned a bunch of my favorite cards.  I realized while writing this post up that the scans don't even come close to representing what he sent me.  I think I ended up scanning every single Ginter card, two Bowman cards, and zero Topps Chrome cards... what can I say...

I am getting fairly close to finishing this year's mini inserts!

I didn't even realize that I still had 2009 Bowman on my want list.  I bought a lot of it 6 years ago.  Not sure why though... it's pretty ugly.  Oh, and there's almost no one of note in the entire set.  I'm still going to try and finish it at this point because I think I'm only 9 cards away from completing it all.

I'm extremely grateful to Tim for this card.  These retail only inserts are getting harder and harder to find and now I have 8 of the 10 from 2013 and I haven't had to buy one individually yet!

As I said before, this is an extremely poor representation of what Tim actually sent me.  Whenever you get close to 100 cards directly from your want list, its an exciting day.  What isn't exciting is afterwards... when you have to go through said want list and cross them all off.

Yep... that still needs to be done.  Sigh.

THANKS TIM!

2015 Topps Chrome Jumbo

I feel like I haven't touched this blog in forever.  Ginter aftermath has hit me hard.  I've been trading like crazy through a variety of methods and have started inching closer to completing the set.  Anywho... I picked up some* Topps Chrome today, so I thought I'd share.  I felt like recording a video to boot.

2015 Gint-A-Cuffs!!! Final Pack!!!

Our very last pack!  We're due to receive one more Starting Points card.  Could it be yet another favorite player?!?!

#140 Jose Altuve

#64 Austin Jackson

#139 Chris Sale +2 FP

SP-81 Matt Adams +2 Starting Points

Alas, 'twas not to be.  But we did get a Sale earlier which brings our favorite player total to 11/15!  Can we get a Kimbrel!?!?!

Regular Back MINI - #156 Brian Dozier - another zero point mini...

#331 Alcides Escobar

#26 Steven Souza Jr.

#218 Carlos Rodon

Pack total: 4 points
Running total: 185.2 points

Well, not the best of packs to end on... and no Kimbrel.

Overall points per pack: 6.9667

GRAND TOTAL: 185.2

As of the time of writing this post (Wednesday the 19th), this would be the highest score submitted so far.  I'm also fairly confident that this is an extremely good score.  We netted favorite players out the wazoo... just not my own favorite player.  Minis, inserts, and our boxtopper carried us here, so I feel like the score is beatable, but it would take a high scoring hit (or a cloth mini) to do so.  We shall soon find out!

Oh, final Yankee count: 2
AWESOME!

2015 Gint-A-Cuffs!!! Pack 23

#259 Jonathan Schoop

#38 Evan Longoria

SP-3 Mike Trout +2 Starting Points, +2 FP

More favorite players coming through this insert set!  If I even come close to winning this contest, it will certainly be on the backs of these cards.

A&G Back MINI - #172 Matt Carpenter +2 for laughing at me and telling me that, "I should go into your binder!  You NEEEEED me!"  I say... "YOU DON'T HAVE STATS!  WHY WOULD I WANT TO LOOK AT YOU!"

#87 Francisco Liriano +0 for not being a Yankee

FSRB-MKA Megan Kalmoe +10.2 for being a hit on FP list.

COM'MON... another dupe relic?  Boo.  At least this one gets bonus points.

#270 Mike Foltynewicz +1 FT

Pack total: 15.2 points
Running total: 181.2 points

We just broke our expected total from the halfway and two thirds point of the box which sat at 174.  One pack remains.  Is it possible we break 200??? Very unlikely, but either way this pack was a Gint-A-Cuffs success though not an actual one... a second dupe relic.  Sigh... anybody want either of them???