got my ginter, mostly

we are a long way from the gintacuff days, but i still like to pick up some allen & ginter when it is released. this year, i bought a hanger pack and a blaster/value box at target. the hanger pack yielded these nine cards

plus five more that i will show in a moment. i understand that there are only 300 cards in the set this year, and no short prints. that didn't stop people from trying to read into the different ribbon designs on the cards - different ribbon layouts and/or colors, as well as some that are missing the "2026". see below for an example

the nickelsen guy is in a band called "the maine" which i had not heard of. still, i appreciate him being in the set to save us from more reality tv "personalities". the other five cards in the pack were these:

i prefer the roger clemens chrome mini parallel to a regular george springer mini for sure.

i finished the pack with a flurry, with the blue foil filagree nolan mclean card and a couple inserts. the walter johnson card comes from the "career 250" insert set, but is numbered with a "cr-" prefix. 

the samuel basallo insert is from the n43 insert set, using the design that in the past was reserved for box toppers. by the way, i will mention now that i joined a team break, and in the video, the breaker came across the walter johnson card and assigned it to the washington nationals' slot. now, the card back says nationals, which was actually the club's proper name back in the big train's days. however, they were more commonly known as the senators, and that franchise went on to become the twins. i don't participate in breaks too often, but i do often wonder if they even follow baseball.

the blaster netted me three dodger base cards

plus a shohei ohtani mini

it's just a regular mini

which is fine by me.

when i saw the checklist, i noticed that tim mcgraw had a card, and it was one that was in one of my packs

i thought that perhaps tug mcgraw would get a card in the set, too, as some sort of synchronicity, but he did not, and the back of tim's card

does not mention him which i suppose makes sense since his success is independent of any affiliation with baseball.

there weren't any other base cards i felt compelled to show, so here are the inserts

wicked power david ortiz

wicked power follows up last year's wicked curves inserts

career 250 albert pujols

career 250 mariano rivera

career 250 alex rodriguez

career 250 babe ruth

career 250 roger clemens

these cards just highlight impressive career statistics, not necessarily records. i would love to know how topps goes about figuring out insert set subjects and topics. sure, a-rod's career rbi total is impressive, but if there's a babe ruth card celebrating a larger number of rbi, why do we need the a-rod card?

here are some of the minis - kyle teel n35 design

jonah tong rookie design variation

garrett nickelsen black border

kyle stowers gold border

in addition to the konnor griffin rookie from the hanger pack, i found griffin n43 insert

he's only 20 but it feels a bit like collectors are already moving on.

here's a scan of one of the pack wrappers from the blaster

i noticed the text - "packs with a special insert may contain less cards". nice, topps. i believe that should be fewer cards. just like how miller lite is less filling because it has fewer calories. anyway, i found such a pack, and the special insert was this framed mini relic of anthony volpe

i will admit, i was thinking it was going to be an auto once i saw that it was framed as i forgot that there were both full size and mini relics in the release. that's because the first card i bought from this release was steve garvey's full size relic card

it arrived about a week after i bought this stuff at target, and my team break spoils came a day or two after that. i already showed the base cards of mookie betts, roki sasaki, and roy campanella, so i won't bother with them, but here are (most of) the other dodger base cards from the set

the one dodger i am missing from the team set is clayton kershaw. i did, however, score his career 250 insert

which celebrates his career era of, um, 2.49? not according to the back

the back is correct - kershaw's era according to baseball reference is 2.53. the only players listed on that site with a 2.49 career era are hippo vaughn and bob ewing, and i don't think topps is making cards of those guys. i know they made a similar error on cy young's career 250 card as well. sadly, it's not surprising.

here's the other inserts i acquired in the break - ohtani wicked power

and betts and ohtani n43 design

ginter is known for its mini parallels, and i received four of those

the hyeseong kim and betts minis are a&g backs

there are some full sized parallels in ginter these days, and i received a few - will smith silver portrait

chrome freddie freeman and jackie robinsonand chrome refractor freddie freeman

which i believe is a case hit.

so, enter sportlots, from whom i purchased a kershaw base card

that card had the correct value for his career era on the back

so i really don't know what was going on with that insert card.

i filled out my sportlots purchase with a couple more a&g cards featuring some of the most iconic numbers in the sport. here's hank aaron and 755

and ty cobb and.....4,189?

i was brought up to know that cobb had 4,191 hits in his career. apparently, in 2019, researchers found that he had been miscredited with a couple of hits. baseball reference has adopted the updated value, as has topps. mlb.com still lists cobb's career hit total as 4,191. i knew about this a couple of years ago, or maybe for a bit longer than that. 

i did not realize until this year, however, that a similar thing applied to walter johnson. this year, i heard talk about max scherzer passing johnson with his 3,516th strikeout. say what? 3,508 is the number of strikeouts walter johnson had. anyone who was watching baseball in 1983 knew this as nolan ryan and steve carlton passing him and see-sawing back and forth for a bit was a big deal. well, the elias sports bureau has 3,515 as his career total, while baseball reference now says 3,509. for some reason, mlb.com has the 3,508 that i am familiar with but also has articles posted saying that his total is the 3,515 from elias. ponderous.

anyway, i purchased my team slot from topp tier breaks. the guy at least knows his parallels and product, unlike some of the other breakers i've seen and/or purchased slots from over the past couple of years. i picked up a team slot in a hobby jumbo update break from topp tier and should have those cards soon. stay tuned!

a second look at series 2

my mega box of 2026 topps series 2 showed up a few weeks ago, but i held off on this post until i finished my dodger team set. that happened on monday, so here we are. this won't be all dodgers, though, as there were some cards featuring other teams that i enjoyed.

double play turns on cardboard seem to be less frequent these days, but here is a very nice jp crawford card

i don't seek out cards that feature cards, but i think it makes sense for topps to go this route given the state of the hobby

not sure why "stars align" was the title of this pack ripping themed card, but i don't work for topps. here's the back

"sweet hit" is mentioned but not "sick pull".

gerrit cole's card

features a photo of him pitching during game 5 of the 2024 world series, assumedly just before the wheels came off and the dodgers erased the 5-0 deficit in the 5th inning.

harrison bader's card

has me wondering what the rush was to get him into series 2 as a giant rather than waiting for update. this is an obvious photoshop that we didn't really need. i suppose that perhaps topps recognized that bader split 2025 between two teams and then signed with the giants for 2026. it's possible that by the time this year's update rolls around, he might not be on the giants anymore. for the record, this photo is bader scoring a winning run on a walk-off sac fly for the phillies. 

jake mangum's card

has me thinking that the ball is headed into the third base dugout.

denzel clarke

has some nice cards to date, and the only thing i don't like about this is the cramming of "athletics" into a space meant for three letters. why create a design element that doesn't work for all of the teams? it's ponderous.

the guardians' team card

is cropped nicely

the next two cards are dodgers in disguise. here's jack little

and justin dean

both of these cards have these world champions airbrushed into their new uniforms. here are the backs

that show their limited dodger experience. the little card is in my dodger stadium collection, as is josh hader's

which features a very similar looking shot.

i've added luis matos' card

to the "header" part of my retired numbers collection, as it shows orlando cepeda's number on display in pac bell/at&t park

i found kazuma okamoto's rookie card

with some impressive npb stats on the back

plus his teammate trey yesavage's rookie card

as for parallels, i found alec bohm

and gavin lux

in rainbow foil form, and cedric mullins

on an aqua rainbow foil parallel of a parallel.

here's a javier sanoja holofoil parallel

the inserts were a bit more interesting, with 1991 cards of carter jensen and nick kurtz

plus a 1991 all-star card of joe mauer

1991 topps was a favorite set of mine during the junk wax era, and the all-star card design is still my favorite of the separate all-star subsets that began in 1982.

here are a couple of the silver crackle foil 1991 parallels

juan soto, whatever, but i like finding new dale murphy cards.

the most plentiful inserts are the "titans of the game" cards that don't have that moniker on the front in series 2. i found tarik skubal

three rookies

plus one more

i read somewhere that topps intentionally left the "titans of the game" off of the fronts because the players' heads often obscured the "a" so the card looked like "tit ns of the game". not sure if that is true.

the other plentiful insert set is "stars of mlb". here are the ones that were in my mega box

back to inserts, i was fortunate to find a couple of dodger cards, including a silver crackle 1991 card of blake snell

plus freddie freeman's 1991 all-star card

base cards were in line with the expected distribution, and i was able to cross freeman

justin wrobleski, miguel rojas, hyeseong kim

tyler glasnow

and the shohei ohtani, yoshinobu yamamoto, and roki sasaki combo cards

off of my list. typically, topps reserves images showing the commissioner's trophy to golden mirror parallel status, so i was happy to see it on that "risen sons" card.

if you don't want to see any more dodger cards, go ahead and leave now.

to complete my team set, i went to sportlots and ordered the cards of jack dreyer, edwin diaz, emmet sheehan

kyle tucker, will smith

andy pages

and shoehei ohtani

i actually like that ohtani gets cards in series 1 and 2 since that means we get full stats on the back. hitting stats in series 1 and pitching stats in series 2

i did my best to fill out these orders with parallels and inserts that were reasonably priced. here's a sandglitter wrobleski

stars of mlb yamamoto and freeman

titans of the game freeman

and alex freeland

glove work mookie betts

and crooked numbers sandy koufax

382 strikeouts blows my mind, and then to think that nolan ryan reached 383 is beyond ridiculous.

this one is not from series 2, but it came with one of the orders so i'll show it here - clayton kershaw's perennial all-stars

i was hoping to find more cheap parallels and inserts at the june card show, but came away with only these three - rainbow foil kim

and a holiday and gold tucker

finally, i picked up a few cards on ebay, including clayton kershaw's crooked numbers insert

the base version of snell's 1991 card

this trio of 1991 all-star cards

plus glove work inserts of freeman and jackie robinson

those all came together in a lot.

as for singles, i've only bought one of the steve garvey 1991 auto cards

although parallels abound

this one was pretty inexpensive, perhaps due to the off-centered signature but i don't mind.

i am more pleased to have been able to add one of the world series champion autos again this year. this time, i bought a tommy edman orange parallel auto numbered to 25

that had a low buy it now price. here's the back

i would like to add a couple more of these, but prices are a bit out of line as you might expect.

i will probably purchase some update directly from topps and then wait for 2027 heritage. stay tuned!