2012 Allen and Ginter Rollercoaster cabinet cards - A blog post a year and a half in the making.

Am I a roller coaster fanatic? No not really. Do I enjoy oversized cards featuring oddball subjects? Yes I do!

So after one ebay purchase and two trades I am now the owner a full set of Allen and Ginter roller coaster cabinet cards.  One of those cards took a little while to get to me, but it's here and now I can complete this blog post I started writing back in March of 2012.

I also love this set only has 5 cards. Making it easy to finish.

First  up is Leap the Dips in Lakemont Park in Altoona, Pennsylvania.  It's the oldest operating roller coaster in the world opening in 1902. Leap the Dips operated until 1985 when it was shut down to disrepair and then after a fund raising event was restored and reopen in 1999.  Leap the Dips is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is listed as a National Landmark.

The Scenic Railway at Dreamland Park in Margate, UK has seen better days as an arsonist destroyed about 25% of the ride and all the trains in 2008.

Like the Scenic Railway above the Ruthschebanen has an on board brakeman to slow the coaster. At the Bakken Amusement park in Denmark, the Ruthschebanen is Europe's oldest Roller Coaster in operation.

The Wild One currently resides at Six Flags in Maryland, but was opened in 1917 as the Giant Coaster at Paragon Park in Nantasket Beach, Massachusetts.

Built in 1921 and still rolling at Kennywood Park in West Mifflin Pennsylvania the Jack Rabbit offers the double dip after the lift hill and the rear cars were designed to offer the most air time.  They are considered to be the most desirable seats by roller coaster enthusiasts.

There you go some roller coaster history for you.

HELP!!!

A little dramatic?  Oh yeah.

My wife had her Ladies who Lunch, Dames who Dine, Chicks who Chow or whatever they call it dinner last night.  It's one of those lady get togethers where they can bitch about men, discuss the latest episode of Grey's Anatomy and other woman issues.  That left me with no real rush to get home last night so I headed down to the Target to pick up a new CO2 Detector. As luck would have it Target was completely out of them.  Serious not a single CO2 detector in the CO2 detector aisle. So I ended up walking over to the toy section to see if they had by some miracle gotten any Lego Series 9 Minifigures in.  They had not. However they had a huge section of deeply discounted toys.  And mixed in to the pile of mostly crap I was able to pull out a Mego Bloks Spider-man play set for $5 and found about 11 Halo Series 3 blind packs for under a buck a piece. Not that I'm into the Halo Mega Bloks, but that's a good deal.  Lets just say I still think my trip to Target was a success.

And since I still had no reason to hurry home I decided to head over to Don's Sportcards which is just down the road from Target in south Anchorage.  I wanted to pick his brain about my  Topps Exclusive Deal bitch I've been working on and just to stop in so he could rub in the fact that his Niners beat the crap out of my Packers.

So what's the point you ask?  This is getting a little long winded you say?  Sorry.

Point is Don had a bunch of new singles from this years Gypsy Queen and Allen and Ginter.  He has a customer he calls the hurricane that comes in and buys a lot of stuff. Opens it there, takes what he wants and usually leaves what he doesn't , mostly base cards, but there were a fair amount of mini's and inserts mixed in as well.

I was able to find the last card I needed for my Gypsy Queen set and found all but one of the Allen and Ginters.  This is where you come in.  I only need one more card.  This one...

#197 Ty Cobb.

So if any of you out there in the Blogosphere happen to have an extra one of these to trade let me know.  Plus I still have a lot of stuff on my need list you can find it here.  And of course I'm always looking for Brewers and Packers cards for my team sets and card for my PC's.

Thanks
CB out!!

Another box of Ginter

I ended up stopping into the other great LCS in town, Don's Sportcards. I was going to pick up a few supplies, peruse the drop zone, and see what he had to offer.  When I noticed he had boxes of Ginter marked down to under 90 bucks already I knew I was walking out with one.  I also picked up a few blasters of the stuff when I was down working in Juneau.  I won't bore you with any of the filler just the hits.

The box topper. This one's probably going to find it's way down to Colbey.

Andrew Bailey Relic

Rajai Davis Bat Relic.  I actually pulled this from  one of my blasters.  Always nice to get something from a blaster.

Bobby Knight Relic.  I haven't had the best luck with Ginter this year, but I will say I've pulled some nice relic subjects this year.

And I did manage my first auto.

This is my second Brandon Belt auto this year.  I also got his Gypsy Queen auto earlier.

I didn't really get anything else to write home about in the box.  No red back A & G mini's or Rip Cards.
I should have my need list up soon.  But I'm writing this knowing that I won't be in town when it posts.  Sorry guys.  I'm still up for trading and I do have a bunch or extras.  I won't be back in town till the end of August, so put a sticky note somewhere.  I will write a post when I get back and open the trading floor again.  Thanks again.

More Ginter code cards for the codophiles!

Well I bought another box of ginter and a couple blasters and I'm going to post that break later.  But I thought I'd post the code cards for anyone trying to do this thing.  You might already have seen these, but here they are front to back.

2012 Allen and Ginter Code Cards

As promised I'm posting my code cards from my box break of 2012 Allen and Ginter.  I only got three, but here they are.

I'm not sure if the ad card has anything to do with the game, but I'm posting it anyways.

Bloodstained Pin

Back of the Bloodstained pin card.

Second Scrape of Paper

Back of Second Scrape of paper.

Guttman Residence.

Back of the Guttman Residence.

Good luck guys.  I like that Topps is switching it up a bit this year with the code as more of a who dunnit. 

I'll post more cards as I get them.  Does anyone know if and who solved last years code?

CB out.

2012 Allen and Ginter Box Break

Yep another A & G box break.  Gotta get mine in before I leave for my next work trip.  I found time between working on the house, filling my freezer with salmon, and other miscellaneous stuff to wander over to Bosco's to pick up a box of A & G.  And I was also surprised when I started talking with the sports card manager, Pat, that he discovered my blog. Not that I keep it a secret that I write a baseball card blog, but I don't tend to spread it around.  Anyways Pat was really good to me last year picking out boxes of A & G.  I got rip cards, a red auto Stan Lee, and various other awesome stuff.  Let see if this box holds up, so Pat this one's for you.

I won't deny it I'm a lover of Allen and Ginter.  As a man who likes his mini's, oddballs, and quirky stuff A & G is awesome.  I have to say back when Upper Deck had a baseball license, Goodwin was a close second, but you just never know what's going to pop up in your box of A & G.

This year there are lots of different mini inserts and a couple cool full sized inserts as well.

My box label for those who would like one.

But lets start at the top and work our way back shall we.

This years base design has a nice art deco look.  I like the full border and stock.  As always these will  look great hard signed and I ordered a couple Brewers team sets to try and see if I could get a couple autographed TTM. Mr. Axford here is a great signer and I will be hitting him up again for sure.

Of course there are the mini's.

I was lucky enough to snag a Yu Darvish mini rookie, it's a regular back, but that's ok.

Of course there are a few parallel mini's like usual. I also got a few SP mini's I haven't gone through all of them so I don't have a hard count, but I know I got at least 2.

The A&G back. And there is a red A&G back,  hand numbered to 25. I didn't get any of those though. Of the base mini's I got 6 A&G backs.

I also got 3 black bordered Mini's.

My box topper was this Baseball Highlight's cards.  I'm not a fan of the Cards, but it could be worse.

On to the full sized inserts.

The main 100 card insert set is What's in a Name.

I have to be honest I started flipping through these and before you know it I'd read just about all of them that I pulled.  I like the idea and I like the set, but I'm not going to go after this monster.

I got 3 Baseball Highlight Sketches cards.  Clemente, Fisk and Ichiro.

I've always liked this set, but never really been compelled to try and collect it.

As a lover of history I will be collecting this set, like last years Floating Fortresses.

Another insert oddball I'll probably try for are these World Tallest Buildings.

I'm going to save my code cards for another post for those that are trying to solve it.
All the oddball inserts and code ares are 1:8 the What's in a Name cards fall 1:2.

Now onto the mini inserts.  I didn't get any SSP's and I also didn't get any People of the Bible or Musical Masters. Both of which have the same odds of insertion as the rest of the oddball mini's 1:5.

Here is another set I'll chase. Worlds' Greatest Military Leaders.  I got one of these.

I also got only one Man's Best Friend.  I'm torn right now if I'm going to go after this set or not.  Will see after my field season in a month or so how hard these are to find.

I will be trying for this mini set as well probably.  I only got the one, but it's the good one. Achya if it's not Scottish it's crap!

I did manage to snag two mini's of the other set I know for sure I'm going after.  Giant's of the Deep.

Now onto the hits.

Spoiler I didn't hit an auto.  Last year I heard that whole cases didn't have any autographs and I was pretty lucky with what I pulled. But the cards I got were pretty nice.

Elvis! I know a Rangers fan who might want to trade for that.

Johnny Mac!  This will go great with my McEnroe Auto I pulled last year, if I ever get it that is.  Still waiting on Topps to fulfill that redemption.

And a Arnold Palmer card.

Well three relics kinda suck.  I'm glad I got three pretty decent relics.  They won't pay for the box, but that's life.  Oh wait what's this....

It's the premier oddball of the set, besides the butterfly redemptions I mean.  This was in the last pack I opened and I wasn't expecting it at all, especially after I already pulled my three relics.  This won't pay for the box either, especially after I looked what these were pulling in on eBay, but that's ok I think I'll keep this oddball.

Well all in all not too bad, but definitely not the best I've ever opened.  Sorry Pat.  I do plan on buying at least one more box of this.  It's hard to resist. But it'll be a while, as I'm leaving for another work trip tomorrow.

That being said I've had a few people express interest in a trade or too from other posts.  I'm up for trading, but after my field season is done and I'm around for more than 3 days.  That'll happen sometime in September I hope.  So put a sticky note somewhere.

And thanks again to all of you that read my blog.

CB out.