Box Break: 2009 Allen & Ginter

Without further ado (or Adu since he was in 2007 Ginter), here’s my box break of 2009 Allen & Ginter.  I wasn’t sure when I’d be able to purchase a box of 2009 Ginter and so I didn’t sign up for the big Gint-A-Cuffs break-off.  It’s probably for the best anyway.  I think that I outdid my whole box with the previously posted 5 pack purchase.

I’ll start off with a Pujols base card.  By now, everyone has seen this set and either loves it or hates it.  Personally, this is my favorite Allen & Ginter set as far as the look of the cards goes.  The added color on the portrait cards makes them look even better than previous years and there are some absolutely beautiful cards in the landscape format.  Those cards alone are worth the price of admission.

Things started off pretty well with my box.  I pulled a Pujols N43 card and was pretty happy with that.  I need to check out a couple of card shows and see if any dealers are carrying the side loaders that these fit into.

What were the first box toppers?  1993 Stadium Club Master Photos?  1993 Donruss Award Winners jumbos?  I remember really liking both of those a lot.  I’ve got a few of the Piazza jumbos from 1994 in frames.

I like the National Pride set, but I don’t know if I’ll ever complete it due to the sheer size of it.  It looks like you can pick up each and every single from this set for eighteen cents on Sportlots.com so I may do that to finish my set once I’m done with packs.

If this set had come out a week or two later, they could have done a rare variant of Jason Bay celebrating the fact that he became an American Citizen.  I’m surprised there haven’t been any short prints or variants in the one per pack sets yet.  While the Sox chase Halladay, Martinez and Gonzalez, I’d much rather they first take care of making sure that Jason Bay stays in Boston after this season.

Topps consecutive insert numbering makes it way to Allen & Ginter with the National Pride set.  I got cards 3 – 26 and that seems to be how the boxes are packed out.  That’s going to lead to lots and lots of doubles if people open boxes that overlap.

I pulled 4 of the Brian Kong sketch cards.  Some of these look great and some of them look terrible.  I never really understood putting sketch cards into sports products, but an insert set like this one makes a little more sense.

This Griffey is my favorite out of the sketches that I pulled.  I also got Zambrano, The Big Unit and Aaron Boone.  Yes, I have two of these cards for the kindling pile.

Lincecum also has a great looking landscape card in this set.  The picture is a little tough to see on the mini, but I didn’t pull the regular sized card.  This version is going to have to tide me over until I pick up the regular version for my set.  Some other minis of note were Chipper, Brad Penny, Roy Halladay and Papelbon.

The quality of cards I got with Ginter backs were so bad it Hertz.  Along with Mr. Hertz, I pulled Kenji Johjima, Mark Ellis, Anna Tunnicliffe and Geovany Soto.

I didn’t much better with my black bordered cards.  The Willie Williams card is nice.  I also pulled James McDonald and Ubaldo Jimenez.

Oh, I almost forgot.  I also pulled an Andrew Miller Ginter back which went straight into an envelope  for Mario from Wax Heaven.  He’s been more than generous with me and the rest of the blogging community and that’s the least that I can do.  I wish it had been a numbered back or printing plate for his collection.

One of the big problems with 2009 Ginter seems to be quality control.  Many boxes are missing the promised third hit and even more boxes contain damaged cards.  My box had some really gnarly cards in it with the worst being this Nalyvaiko rookie card.  Check out the right side of the card.  It is dented, creased, bent and ripped.  I’m not quite sure how that happens to a mini in the middle of the pack, but it did.

My other National Hero was Mustafa Ataturk from Turkey who Topps apparently likes better.

I was really hoping for a mythical creatures insert card, but wasn’t lucky enough to get one.  I did pull two cards from the Hoaxes, Hoodwinks and Bamboozles insert set.  I now know more about fake fairies and fake bathtub stories.

I’m not sure if this set is in chronological order, but I got cards 15 and 16 which both took place in 1917.

I wonder if there’s a card in there to commemorate my box of 2009 Upper Deck Baseball that was 40 cards short including two hits and the shoddy customer service that has resulted in no solution to the problem.

Here’s my first hit… er, foul tip.  It’s a bat card of Cameron Maybin.  If I remember correctly, I also pulled a Maybin out of my 2009 Topps Series 1 HTA Jumbo Box.  At this rate, I’ll be able to reconstruct one of his bats in a few years.  This is another card that’s probably destined for the pile to ship off to BlowoutCards once I’ve got 50.  Of course, once I get 50 the promotion will probably end.

Next up is a boring, plain, white swatch from Yovani Gallardo.  This card is a little bit better.  It looks like Gallardo is back on track after missing most of 2008 due to injury, but I’m so sick and tired of white swatches.  It’s bad enough that jersey cards are a dime-a-dozen these days, but can the card companies at least try to make them look interesting.  I want to see colors and it would be even cooler if they used alternate jerseys like the Red and Green jerseys that the BoSox wore at different times last season.
 
This last card is a pretty good one, but it figures that I would pull a David Wright relic while he’s in the midst of the worst offensive season of his career.

I like this card for a couple of reasons.  It has a great picture on it and it contains a non-white jersey swatch.  Kudos to you Topps on the creation of this card.

This was a solid box, but as I stated in previous posts, it wasn’t anything spectacular.  Somehow, Topps managed to short me 2 cards and include two duplicates in the box.  When you are only getting around 36% of the base set, there’s no way that there should be any doubles.  My box included 4 damaged base cards including a short printed ‘Nique and the one previously pictured mangled National Hero.  Each card in this box cost a whopping fourty-seven cents.  Maybe I’ll just buy a bunch of cards on SportsLots instead of buying any more packs because that’ll be a lot cheaper and I think I’m all set on hits for this year’s product.

I do love the set and will be completing it.  I don’t know if I’ll ever break open another box.  Possibly in a year from now if the price drops down to what I paid for 2008.  I’ve got to mix this all together with what I’ve gotten out of packs and get a checklist online.  If anyone out there needs any singles, let me know.

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