So 4 boxes arrived yesterday and 4 boxes have been opened today. How did I do? Well I didn’t do as good as last years 4 boxes…..which isn’t surprising when last years boxes contained a 1/1 Verlander Printing Plate and a #/5 Jackie Robinson Rip Card.
But I did alright. My aim with Ginter is going to be to complete the base set and all the inserts (full size and mini) and to get all the Cardinals relics and to that end I have made very good progress. Beyond that it depends on what hits I get as to what I do with them (ie keep, make available for trade or sell)
First out the box is of course the box toppers so lets take a look at the 4 that I got :
Now I actually like both these sets a lot. Last year I had no interest in collecting the N43 box topper set – it didn’t take me at all. I really like these black and white oversized cards and also the wonders of the World set looks great. So I might think about collecting them. The problem of course is storage/display of these oversized sets so it will require some thought before plunging in.
Next up the base cards. Well I completed the non short printed set 1-300. The first 2 boxes I didn’t get many dupes but the 3rd box was a disaster with only about 5 or 6 new base cards. Luckily the 4th box came to the rescue and filled in all the gaps. As for the short prints it was the 3nd box that was the culprit this time with only 4 new ones I didn’t have from the first box. Boxes 3 and 4 then proceeded to produce all new ones so Im left needed just 13 out of the 50 SPs.
That said I am gonna have to find myself a new card number #44 at some point. why’s that? well Card #44 is Yasiel Puig. I pulled 2 of them and given the ridiculous prices they are selling for on ebay at the moment that’s exactly where they’ve both gone straight away. I currently have them listed for a buy it now price of £24.99 (approx. $37) with free shipping. That’s for 2 base cards. Insane. That isn’t sustainable so lets hope mine sell and then if I don’t manage to trade for one I should be able to pick it up from COMC for a hell of a lot less in a few months time. Here’s the Puigs in all their glory :
Before we move on to the more interesting stuff lets take a look at these 2 cards from the base set :
Its the same card right? Well no because as you’ll no doubt see there’s a green tinge behind one head and an orange tinge behind the other. So what’s going on? Let take a look at the back :
Exactly the same….oh no different number! One is Card number 100 and the other is SP Card number 350. The same non baseball player twice in the set with exactly the same photo…..Ummm Topps WTF? Hopefully someone gets fired for that but somehow I doubt it. Probably promoted for saving money on number of photos / printing plates needed….
Right onto the inserts and hits. I’m not gonna show every insert I got. It’d take forever. I will show every hit but first to give a flavour of the inserts and minis here’s a few photos of what was in box 1 :
The inserts shouldn’t be anything new for fans of Ginter. Designs are similar to what we’ve seen in the past. As I said above I’m going after all the insert sets and this is where I did really well. The Across the Years 100 card insert set I got 49 unique and 1 dupe. Out of the other full size inserts sets I only picked up 2 dupes and they are on the 10 card martial Mastery set which I only now need 1 for anyway. And all the minis were unique.
The mini parallels of the main set I’m yet to decide what to do with. I’m toying with the idea of chasing a complete parallel set but that could be quite painstaking and costly.
So onto the main event – the hits. According to the box and the literature surrounding A&G this year we are guaranteed 3 hits which could be autographs, relics, printing plates, rip cards or book cards. Now as I said above I didn’t do as well as last year so there;s no rip card/printing plate this time (or indeed book card). However the eagle eyed among you may well have spotted in the photos above that there aren’t just 3 autos/relics coming out of box number 1. Nope there’s 4! Bonus hit!! And even better, 2 of the hits are Cardinals Relics! Yep Box 1 was definitely the best of the 4 boxes. Its all down here from now lol
Here they are up close and personal :
The Jon Jay and Rafael Furcal go straight into the Cardinals collection. The Ike Davis and Paul Goldschmidt will be available for trade / sale.
Box 2 then. Well it was a disappointment on the SP front and it was also somewhat of a disappointment on the hit front. Here comes the dreaded R word….Redemption!
A redemption and a patch from a Lacrosse Coach. meh! All available for trade.
Box 3 and things get better again :
Hello Shelby! I obviously got the Cardinals hot boxes….and Im not complaining about that! Not being an autograph collector though leaves me in a quandary. It is very very pretty so do I add it to my collection? Do I sell now? Do I sell later? Has anyone got anything equally as pretty to trade for it? Decisions decisions…. The other 2 are of course available for trade/sale/COMC bound if no takers
Last box then and not a bad one by any stretch of the imagination :
Pitchers all the way here and some pretty good ones at that. None that I want to keep long term but Zimmermann and Darvish are both Cy Young candidates and if / when they win the award this year or further down the line their cards are gonna go up in values. Both are probably worth holding onto for now. The Luebke though is available for trade.
So there we go. Boxes busted. Want list and Trade bait sections are updated so please check them out and get in touch if you want to trade – leave a reply or send me an email!
Jeffs Collections 