Check Out My Cards - Volume III: A Josh Hamilton N43

I have some sort of completion problem with Allen & Ginter.  What I mean by that is that I feel compelled to complete almost every insert set within the Allen & Ginter family.  One of the toughest sets to complete is the box topper sets.  I already showed off the 2011 Cabinet card set that I finally completed thanks to Check Out My Cards (check my archives).  Today, it's another Ginter box topper that I bought from CoMC.

That's Josh Hamilton from the 2012 N43 box topper set.  The N43 set is tough because it has 15 different cards - each seeded 1 per box.  Of course, sometimes you get one of the aforementioned Cabinet cards instead...or if you are lucky, you get an autograph or relic instead.

Anyhow, I'm slowly but surely coming closer to completing the full 2012 N43 set.  In fact, I'm now down to needing a mere TWO N43 cards from 2012.

2012 Topps Allen & Ginter Wants:
N43:  N43- 11 (Ken Griffey Jr.), 14 (Mike Schmidt)

I'm also working on the 2011 Allen & Ginter N43 set.  Somehow, I'm missing THREE of those still, despite having an extra year to try and collect the pesky things.

2011 Allen & Ginter Wants:
N43:  Joey Votto, Adam Wainwright, David Wright

I can't be sure that I'll ever finish off the two N43 sets, but when I can find one of the missing cards for cheap on a site like Check Out My Cards, I will pounce!

At this point, you've now seen four of the 14 cards from my recent CoMC purchase.  What other goodies did I pick up?  You'll have to wait and see!

Check Out My Cards - Volume II: The Elusive Heritage Short Prints!

Welcome to another installment where I show off some of the stuff I got from Check Out My Cards.  Last time, I talked about getting the final card that I needed to complete my 2011 Topps Allen & Ginter cabinet card set.  This time, it's another throwback set of sorts:  Topps Heritage.

Unfortunately, I didn't complete my 2011 Topps Heritage set - but I did get quite a bit closer.  I managed to land a pair of the pesky short prints.

453.  Roy Halladay

464.  Johan Santana

I now only need four more cards and my '11 Heritage set will be complete!  Which cards you ask?  I need the following:

2011 Topps Heritage:
Base:  426, 445, 460, 499

Based on the set checklist, the players depicted on the four cards that I still need are:
426.  Brent Morel
445.  Prince Fielder
460.  Justin Verlander
499.   Dayan Viciedo / Jason Donald / Steve Tolleson / Mitch Moreland


You've now seen three of the 14 cards from COMC - plenty of other interesting stuff is yet to come, including a couple more sets that I was able to fully complete!

Complete Set Chronicles: 2011 Topps Allen & Ginter Cabinet Cards

The Topps Allen & Ginter set is known for many things, but chief among them is the inclusion of a variety of box toppers.  Available only in hobby boxes, the cabinet card set is a set of ten different cards - all of which are much larger than normal cards.  The 2011 cabinet card set had two themes - six of the cards dealt with baseball happenings from the 2010 set while the other four cards celebrated US National Parks.

Alpha:

The set begins with six baseball highlight cards.  Each card features multiple players involved in whatever event the card was celebrating.  For card #1 in the set, that event was the perfect game that wasn't involving Armando Galarraga.  The one downside to the cabinet card design is that the reverse side of the first six cards is exactly what you see above - the only difference being the card number.

Omega:

The final four cards in the set highlight US National Parks.  Much like the baseball highlights, the National Park backs are also all identical (except for the card number).

Card design:
As I mentioned above, the design of the back side of each card is fairly boring - the least Topps could have done would be to provide the card numbers since each card basically features a checklist of the appropriate subset within the cabinet card set.

Other:
Since the set is only ten cards in size, I've scanned each of the ten cabinet cards.  Here's a complete visual checklist of the 2011 A&G cabinet card set.

CB-1:  Galarraga is Almost Perfect

CB-2:  Postseason No-No

CB-3:  Dallas is Perfect in Oakland

CB-4:  Multiple-Milestone Matchup

CB-5:  A-Rod Does it A-Gain, For the 600th Time

CB-6:  Decade of Dominance

CB-7:  Grand Canyon National Park

CB-8:  Yosemite National Park

CB-9:  Yellowstone National Park

CB-10:  Redwood National Park

Overall:
Despite the boring back of the cards, I like the cabinet set quite a bit.  I still haven't discovered the perfect way to store the cards though...that's the biggest drawback to the set if you ask me!  I also don't care much for the card celebrating Roy Halladay's no-no against my Reds...nor do I like the Cardinal-centric "Decade of Dominance" card, even if the card is actually referring to the Cardinals dominating their rival the Cubs.  I do like the National Parks cards quite a bit - though I wish Topps would have done five baseball and five National Parks cards simply to keep some sort of symmetry happening.  As a whole, the set is nice - but not great.  I give it a 6.5 out of 10.

Cutting Back...

As many of you know, I've been doing the whole blogging thing for quite some time now.  In fact, I believe it's been about three years where I've had at least one post on Nachos Grande every.  single.  day.  Many days I had multiple posts - I averaged 2.7 posts a day in both 2012 and 2011.  I'm average a bit less than so far this year (only 2.5 posts per day) but still, it's a lot of posts!

Although I write a lot, I certainly won't go so far as to say that I write well.  Heck, most of my stuff is only even tangentially interesting to most of you - especially the Barry Larkin Collection posts (which I've been doing a better job of writing in a more timely basis lately).

That said, I think it's time to cut back.  I can feel myself on the verge of a blogging burnout - and with my Yahoo! writing giving me enough page views to start paying for my collection (both baseball and LEGO), I should probably spend a bit more time crafting those articles.  Before you despair (yeah right), I promise that I'm not leaving Nachos Grande.  Heck, I'm not even going to stop my daily posts.  What I do plan to do is cut down to one post per day, at least for awhile.  Beginning tomorrow (Wednesday), you can find my new post at 8:01 PM EST.  I'm sure there will be days where I post multiple times (especially for things like group breaks) but I'm going to give the new blogging schedule a run for awhile and see how I like it.  Who knows, maybe the quality of my posts will make up for having fewer new articles to read each day?

As always, I thank each and every one of you for stopping by my humble little blog - without you as readers (and traders), I would have quit this venture a long, long time ago!

Check Out My Cards - Volume I: A Big One Joins My Collection (Elusive Eight in Hand!)

A couple of days ago, I said I had received a package from Check Out My Cards.  I finally got the chance to organize the 14 cards and put them in their respective card binders - but before I did that I made sure to scan 'em!  Over the next few days (or weeks, depending on other posts), I plan to highlight some of the cards I purchased and how the card(s) affect my personal collection.  I'm happy to report that some of the cards finished off sets that I've been working on for quite some time!

For the price of a blaster plus tax, I was able to acquire 14 cards from my want list - but none were bigger than this one:

That's a 2011 Topps Allen & Ginter cabinet card - and it's the last of the cabinet cards that I needed for the set.  This particular card had been languishing on my Elusive Eight list for quite some time - but when I saw a relatively cheap one available on Check Out My Cards, I knew I had to buy it!

This card is part of the National Parks set of cabinet cards - there are four National Parks cards in total (Yellowstone plus Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and Redwood).

With this card now in hand, I'm almost done with the 2011 Topps Allen & Ginter set.  In fact, I am now only looking for three of the N43 cards:

2011 Allen & Ginter Wants:N43:  Joey Votto, Adam Wainwright, David Wright

The cabinet card is one out of 14 different cards that I purchased - stay tuned to see more goodies in the near future!