Tenets of Wilson: 2010 Allen and Ginter

Showing posts with label 2010 Allen and Ginter. Show all posts

2015-02-13

Tis The Season Winnings, Part I

Sometimes, I procrastinate posting and sorting some cards. Normally I don't pay too much attention to how long a particular item has been sitting on my desk, but given that this one was the Tis the Season contest from 2013, I've probably had it in my possession for a little over a year now. But, even with the long delay, I still want to throw Jeff at 2 by 3 Heroes some referral traffic while I show off my prize.

2008 Allen and Ginter #276 Oscar Wilde
2009 Allen and Ginter #311 Gavin Floyd
2010 Allen and Ginter
#14 Shane Victorino
#15 Carlos Quentin
#42 Mark DeRosa
#46 Chad Billingsley
#67 Carl Crawford
#91 Carlos Zambrano

This really has nothing to do with anything, but Oscar Wilde always brings a missed comedic opportunity to my mind. In college, my friend and I went to a video rental store, and his roommate asked him to pick up a DVD of The Importance of Being Earnest (written by Oscar Wilde) so that he could avoid doing his assigned reading. I told him we should bring him Ernest Goes to Jail, then play dumb when he inevitably blew up about it being the wrong movie. Either he didn't think it was that funny, or we didn't want to spend the extra few bucks to rent a second DVD, so we didn't wind up doing it. Learn from my mistakes: never miss a chance to make a joke.

I believe the Gavin Floyd card is a short print, though I'm unclear on the numbering of SPs over the last few years. Also, Mark DeRosa represents the only former Cardinal in this post.

2010 Allen and Ginter
#100 Matt LaPorta
#103 Niccolo Machiavelli
#128 Hans Florine
#133 Nelson Cruz
#146 Carlos Lee
#184 Jake Peavy
#186 Jose Reyes
#187 Jair Jurrjens

I always find myself drawn to the non-baseball subjects in Allen and Ginter, possibly because the players have become mundane by comparison. Only in Allen and Ginter can you pull a Niccolò Machiavelli.

2010 Allen and Ginter
#211 Johnny Strange
#226 Brian McCann
#271 King Tut
#280 Koji Uehara
#294 Buster Posey
#197 Johnny Damon

I always forget Johnny Damon played for Detroit, but this card is here to remind me. I tend to think of him as a member of the Red Sox, then the Yankees, then the A's, then Kansas City, then Tampa. Another of his teams that doesn't come to mind until I look it up is Cleveland. He's got to be one of the best players ever to play for 7 different teams.

2008 Allen and Ginter #75 Travis Hafner
2010 Allen and Ginter
#140 Brandon Allen
# The Parthenon
2010 Allen and Ginter This Day in History
#TDH16 Carlos Gonzalez
#TDH18 Felix Hernandez
#TDH25 Ryan Zimmerman

Mostly to avoid weird unbalance scans, here are the horizontal cards from 2008-2010 Ginter in the package. There was just one 2008 base card, and the rest were from 2010, including the 3 This Day In History inserts.

2014-03-15

Superbowl Winnings, Part 1

Remember that awful, lopsided game back in February? It won a contest for me at Collector's Crack, properly know as Almost the Easiest Superbowl Contest on the Web IV. Going into the game, I knew I had a decent chance of winning since I had chosen Seattle to win and Denver as their opponent, which no one else did. However, even if it had come to the 2nd and 3rd tiebreaker, I'd have done alright. I forecasted 50 total points in the game - which wound up 43-8 if you don't remember - missing the total by just 1. Or, as I prefer to think of it, I predicted everything except the fact that Denver would go for 2 on their TD when down by 30. I also went with 4 turnovers as the final tiebreaker, and hit that dead on.

It sounds a little like I'm bragging, so to be completely clear, I did use my projections to pick the the teams, but the points and turnovers were pretty much just guesses, and I got lucky. Better lucky than good, some say.

Let's see the prizes!

1998 Finest - Refractors
#127 John Mabry

Look at that shimmering Refractor, still protected - and blurred - by Topps Finest protective coating. I've said it before, one day I'm going on a peeling rampage, and freeing most of my Topps Finest cards for the first time.

2004 Donruss Classics
National Trading Card Day
#DP-1 Albert Pujols

Here's the second card in a row I thought was a base card at first, but turned out to be a parallel. The Donruss Classics set included a parallel with the National Trading Card Day logo.

2011 Topps Chrome
#32 Yadier Molina
#141 Lance Berkman
#150 Albert Pujols

Shiny shiny Chrome. I'm surprised I didn't have any Cardinals from the set yet. I'll be adding the others to my want list now.

2008 Allen & Ginter - Mini A&G Backs
#44 Adam Wainwright
#88 Troy Glaus
2010 Allen & Ginter - Mini Black Border
#51 Matt Holliday

And I'll close it with some Allen and Ginter minis. That's a lot of white space on the horizontal Adam Wainwright card. He's in a very vertical pose for a horizontal card, so I kind of wonder why Topps did that. Also, both of the 2008s are Allen and Ginter backs.

I'd keep going, but I like to tag my posts with all the sets and Cardinal players pictured, and I'm at the limit. There's more good stuff left for tomorrow, though.

2014-02-24

Giant Pile of Prizes from Jaybarkerfan's Junk, Part 4

Sometimes when I win a contest, I set the prize aside until I have time to fully rummage through all of it. In this case I won a contest back in late September, and I think the "Small Flat Rate Box" arrived by early October. I opened it immediately, but it's been sitting on my desk, too daunting of task to sort, since then. I finally felt the need to dive into it, and give jaybarkerfan his proper thank you post.

Part 1, 2, 3

First up today is pile of 2010 Allen & Ginter.

2010 Allen & Ginter
#70 Joey Votto
#72 Erick Aybar
#77 Ricky Romero
#82 Justin Upton
#84 Elvis Andrus
#87 Alexei Ramirez
#90 Kevin Kouzmanoff
#182 Chris Carpenter
#183 Tommy Manzella

2010 Allen & Ginter
#185 X-Rays
#187 Jair Jurrjens
#191 Justin Morneau
#197 Johnny Damon (x2)
#198 A.J. Pierzynski
#200 Lance Berkman
#204 Russell Martin
#219 Adam Wainwright

2010 Allen & Ginter
#188 Jason Bartlett
#189 Howie Kendrick

I used to lament small sets that only had the star players, vs the 800ish-card sets of early 90s Topps. But it sure is nice to get a pile of "random junk" cards and have them all be recognizable stars.

2011 Allen & Ginter #40 John McEnroe
2013 Allen & Ginter - Martial Mastery #MM-AP Apache

There were also 2 Allen & Ginter singles from other years, but neither one featuring baseball players. I wonder if Jimmy Connors will ever make it to an A&G card.

1996 Fleer Update
#U61 Dwight Gooden
#U78 Russ Davis
#U146 Israel Alcantara
#U154 Juan Acevedo
#U161 Kevin Roberson
#U190 Aaron Holbert

I didn't recognize the guy in the Cardinals uniform, Aaron Holbert, and looking him up online, that's no surprise. Aaron Holbert played 1 game for us in 1996, then 22 games in 2005 for the Reds. The back of his card says he was set to be our SS of the future after Ozzie Smith retired, but then he got hurt in 1994 and 1995. The look on his face on the card makes me thing we might have caught the very moment of the aforementioned injury.

#16 Stand Up Double (Checklist)
#38 Tim Hudson

2007 Turkey Red
#122 Roy Oswalt
#154 Travis Buck

Finally - for today - here are some Turkey Reds from 2007, which is one of my favorite sets I missed from the years I wasn't collecting (2000-2010). That still hasn't convinced me to buy the super-expensive online exclusive versions of the last few years though. As for 2007, I now have 39 of the approximately 199 cards in the set including short prints, thanks mostly to a group break last year. Perhaps it's time to add the rest to my want list.

We're nowhere near finished with this box...

2013-08-31

Everyone Loves Talking About Themselves

Well, maybe not everyone. But what if I said there was a prize at stake? I'll cut to the chase, go to It's like having my own Card Shop and explain your blog name for a chance to win some Allen and Ginter and Topps 206 minis.

All this can be yours if the price is right

I see at least 2008 and 2010 Ginter in there. I'm pretty sure Peter Gammons is from 2011. And the Topps 206 cards appear to all be 2010. If nothing else, the Bram Stoker will go well with my Mary Shelley.

2013-08-09

College Bowl Game Contest Win, Part 7

For the 2012-2013 College Football season, I entered the College Football Pick 'Em contest hosted by madding of Cards on Cards. I've won several of his contests over the years, and he always dumps a ton of Cardinals on me when I do. Yet, I think this time he may have outdone himself. I may have to work hard to get them all posted before the 2013-14 College Football season starts August 29, and I start posting my Power Rankings again.
[ Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 ]

2010 Allen and Ginter #127 Albert Pujols

I don't recall ever seeing horizontal A&G cards, so I was wondering if this was some sort of short print. Evidently I'm just very unfamiliar with the set.

2010 Allen and Ginter
#28 Felipe Lopez
#58 Colby Rasmus
#182 Chris Carpenter
#343 Brad Penny

My scanner seems to have a little trouble with the backgrounds of 2010 Allen and Ginter. The pale blue fading into the amorphous white border causes it to totally lose its bearings. But the important parts are all there.

2010 Topps
#325 Julie Lugo
#452 Allen Craig

How about that, an Allen Craig rookie. And 51-game Cardinal Julio Lugo.

2010 Topps
Cards Your Mom Threw Out Original Backs #CMT-111 Ichiro/Albert Pujols
Legendary Lineage #LL-48 Stan Musial/Matt Holliday

Ichiro, Pujols, Musial, and Holliday on just 2 cards? I'll take that any day of the week. That Ichiro/Pujols reprint took me a while to figure out, though, since it's an original back version. The word "reprint" appears in small print on the back, though, along with a 2010 copyright date, which helped me narrow it down.

2010 Topps Update
#US-125 Adam Wainwright
#US-176 Felipe Lopez
#US-278 Brad Penny
Peak Performance #PP-109 Colby Rasmus

Brad Penny and Felipe Lopez both started 2010 with the Cardinals, yet they showed up in the Update set for some reason. Even more curious, both are in the A&G group above. I suppose the later release date allows Allen and Ginter to have more up-to-date rosters. This is the set that brought me back to collecting, when I bought a pack on a whim while killing time in Target. Consequently, both it and 2010 flagship - because it has the same look - bring me fond (recent) memories.

2012-05-22

Big Pile, part 1

Have you ever set a bubble mailer aside and totally lost track of it, then found it months later? That's what I did with the Big Pile contest at Royals and Randoms. Based on his blog posting about when he sent it out, and being extremely conservative with postal delivery times, I'll say I've had these for a full 4 months. Oops.

Well, I figure I'm better late than never in posting the cards and sending him a big thanks, so here's part 1.

1992 Pinnacle #9 Andy Van Slyke

I don't remember Andy Van Slyke as a Cardinal, but he does to the Fox Sports Midwest studio commentary for the Cardinals now. Of course, his son just helped the Dodgers finish off a sweep of us the other night with a late-inning pinch hit HR.