Monday, July 27, 2015

2015 Topps Allen and Ginter - First Blaster

Last Friday I posted the first card from the first of two blasters I bought. Let's look at the rest of the cards, in the order I pulled them from the box. I'm not going to post every card, just what I find interesting.

#170 Chris Davis
The first thing I noticed about this card was Davis' soul-searching stare. Then I noticed that the border and logo are gray. The Doug Fister card I featured last Friday had a blue border. 

2015 Spear Topps Allen & Ginter Ancient Armory #18
Third card in and my first insert. I pulled 2 cards from this 20-card set.

2015 Topps Allen & Ginter Mini A and G Back #59 Hector Rondon
Fourth card in and my first mini, and it's an A&G Back. As usual, there is a mini in every pack.

Stephen Drew #306
This card has a red (or brown) border and logo. This is the first time that A&G has had multiple colored borders. Blue, gray, and this color are the three used.  All subtle colors and not overdone. I like it.

Buster Olney #34
 The first non-baseball player card came in the second pack. Is Topps de-emphasizing non-baseball base cards this year? I only found 3 in the whole box.

Justin Verlander #15
The first regular mini card came in the second pack.

2015 Topps Allen & Ginter What Once Would Be #1
My second insert came in the third pack. OK, here's my flying car, where's my jet-pack?

2015 Topps Allen & Ginter Mini Black #28 Jayson Werth
In the third pack is a black-bordered mini. Of the 8 minis I got, only 4 were regulars. The other 4 were  3A&G Backs and this one.

2015 Topps Allen & Ginter Starting Points #66 Cole Hamels
There are 100 cards in this insert set and I pulled three of them, 2 of which were Phillies. The other was Jimmy Rollins. So one former Phillie and one soon to be former Phillie. I got no Phillies or Astros base cards in the box.

2015 Topps Allen & Ginter Keys to the City #9 Las Vegas

A 10-card insert. Most of the insert cards seem to have 10 or 20 cards.

Rocky Balboa #258
For some reason, there is a sub-set of actors from the movie "Rocky" as their parts in the movie. This is the second Sylvester Stallone card I've gotten this year (the other was in Panini Americana).

Topps Allen & Ginter Mythological Menaces #1 Loki
A 10-card mini card insert. Remember him from the Thor movies?

2015 Topps Allen & Ginter Menagerie of the Mind #4 Phoenix
A full-sized set of mythological characters. I wonder if there is a Phoenix in the "Keys to the City" insert?

Collin Cowgill #335
In past sets, cards numbered 301-350 were short-prints. I pulled 4 cards in that range. baseballcardpedia.com makes the point that cards 301-350 are not short prints. tradingcarddb.com and beckett.com both say they are. What does Topps say? As near as I can tell, the actively user-hostile Topps website does not have a checklist for A&G available. Since I pulled four from a blaster, I'm inclined to believe they are not short-printed.

I'm pretty happy with the blaster. I pulled a reasonable amount of inserts and parallel cards. The cards themselves are great. I'd say it's my favorite set since they started adding borders in 2009.


2 comments:

Nachos Grande said...

If you decide to part ways with that Keys to the City card, let me know!

Nachos Grande said...

Also, the base cards 301+ are not short printed this year. However, the minis 301+ ARE short printed. Topps is weird sometimes.