2014 Topps Allen & Ginter - First Look

A&G came out on the 9th and on the 11th I found some in the local big-box stores. I've had a devil of a time finding earlier Topps releases this year.  I snagged the only blaster in the 1st Target I went to and bought 1 blaster (of the 3 there) and 3 rack packs in WalMart.

I like the cards this year, as usual. I've been unhappy the past few years with the ornate borders of the past few years so I'm happy to see a different approach this year. I really like the team name placement in this year's cards and also the titling on the non-baseball cards. The backs look pretty much the same.

My only disappointment was the number of duplicate cards I got from blasters bought in different stores.  Of the 49 base cards I pulled, I pulled 14 duplicates. Cards numbered 301-350 are supposed to be short prints. I pulled 4 of them, 3 of the 4 I also pulled a dup. The other one I pulled 3 of.

I'll post some more later but here are the base cards going into my reference album.

I'll be searching eBay for a hobby box soon.

I'll only show you the one back. I like the little doodads across the front top and the bottom much more than the borders all the way around.

I like to include any subsets in my reference album. I consider rookie cards that are marked as rookie cards, as a subset. This is the only rookie card I pulled and I pulled 2 of them.

I consider cards of retired players to be a subset when the retired players are a feature of the set.

Queen Victoria is making her second appearance in A&G, this year moving up to base card status. She appeared in the mini insert last year, "Heavy Hangs The Head".

Hey, it's 2013's Miss USA! Trivia, according to Wikipedia she is the "first woman from the state of Connecticut ever to be crowned Miss USA." This leads to the question, was there a man from Connecticut named Miss USA?  I like the titles, like "Personalities" as it makes it easier to identify a subset. Personalities seems like a broad category based on my sample.

Roth is a retired professional bowler and a member of both the professional bowling Halls of Fame. He is the 2nd bowler to earn over a million dollars in his career. Some baseball players make that much money in a week.

I had no idea of who this was, but he's apparently not a relative of Barry Zito. According to Wikipedia he is " an American actor, amateur boxer, martial artist, police captain, celebrity bodyguard, stuntman, former boxing trainer and former president of the New York chapter of the Hells Angels". Also, apparently, an actor in the HBO series "Oz", which I've never seen.

I don't consider promo cards to be part of a set but I'll usually include a copy of them in my reference album.