The Ultimate Ginter Mini Set Bracket: Seeding Vote #12 (2018)

Before we get to our next vote, a quick congrats to the glow-in-the-dark Constellations set for winning the top seed out of the 2017 sets.  I was certain that the World's Dudes was going to win but that set fell well short in the voting!  Now, let's see if you all surprise me with the 2018 voting!

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Welcome to the twelfth of my Ultimate Ginter Mini Set Bracket posts!

For the first part of the bracket creation, we need to seed the various mini insert sets.  I thought it'd be fun to first have a vote for the best mini set within each year and use each vote winner as a top seed.  From there, I'll fill in the rest of the bracket with some of the non-winning mini sets and then the entire bracket will be set and we can have our giant vote-off!

I also hope that each of these Seeding Vote posts give you a bit of information about each of the mini sets for a specific year.  That should help with your voting as we move forward into the heart of the Ultimate Ginter Mini Set Bracket.  I laid out the rest of the ground rules in my introductory post so feel free to check that post out as well.  Now, we move on to the good stuff (and remember to vote at the bottom of the post)!

The Ultimate Ginter Mini Set Bracket:  Seeding Vote #12 (2018)

I must admit, these Seeding Vote posts have been way more work (and taken way more time) than I was anticipating at the outset of this project.  That being said, I think the time has been worthwhile, there's been plenty of fun comments and I've enjoyed reading about people finding out about cards (or even full sets) that they now want to try and collect!  Heck, even I learned about some new mini Ginter cards that I hadn't known about previously!  

That all being said, we are nearly done with our seeding posts - only this one for 2018 and then one more for 2019!  At this point, I'm definitely looking forward to the mini bracket, this should be like an amped up March Madness style tournament and I can't wait to see how it all shakes out!

With that out of the way, let's update our running tally of mini sets and the total number of mini cards in each year's edition of Allen & Ginter:

• 2006:  0 sets, 0 total cards
• 2007:  3 sets, 65 total cards
• 2008:  6 sets, 107 total cards
• 2009:  5 sets, 90 total cards
• 2010:  9 sets, 181 total cards
• 2011:  8 sets, 95 total cards
• 2012:  8 sets, 116 total cards
• 2013:  8 sets, 116 total cards
• 2014:  8 sets, 123 total cards
• 2015:  8 sets, 116 total cards
• 2016:  6 sets, 103 total cards
• 2017:  7 sets, 129 total cards
• 2018:  8 sets, 133 total cards

Now, let's take a look at the mini sets for 2018!

Baseball Superstitions

One thing that I've done throughout all of my Seeding Vote posts is try and highlight which sets I've personally collected as well as which cards I still need for sets that I'm actively working on.  For the most part, my needs have been fairly modest - including many years for which I'm actually done with Ginter minis!  Unfortunately, that won't be true for this particular post.  Out of all the years of Allen & Ginter, the 2018 set is by far the set that I've done the worst on in terms of collecting everything.  Heck, I haven't even finished off the full-sized inserts for this set and those are basically a dime a dozen typically!  As usual, I'll denote the cards that I'm still looking to acquire with both bold text and an asterisk(*) in the checklist.  Expect to see a lot of those throughout this post!

Now, as for the set at hand it's a relatively rare baseball-only focused mini set.  As I've gone through and written all of these posts it's surprised me just how few baseball specific mini sets there are in Allen & Ginter.  I guess it feels like there are plenty of mini baseball cards since the most common mini in any pack of Ginter is a mini parallel of the base set but in terms of insert sets there haven't been many at all!  Will that be enough to propel Baseball Superstitions to the top seed for 2018 or will one of the many non-baseball mini sets rise to the top instead?

Checklist:

MBS-1 No talking about a No-hitter*

MBS-2 Batting Gloves*

MBS-3 Wearing the same Helmet*

MBS-4 Postseason Beards

MBS-5 Leaping over the Foul line

MBS-6 Pre-Game Meal

MBS-7 Rally Caps

MBS-8 Wearing The Same Hat*

MBS-9 Drawing in the Batter's Box Dirt*

MBS-10 Between-Inning Routine*

MBS-11 Curse of the Bambino*

MBS-12 Not Changing Seats*

MBS-13 Lucky Jersey Numbers

MBS-14 Mismatched Socks

MBS-15 Baseball cards*

Exotic Sports

This is the retail exclusive mini set for 2018 Allen & Ginter and it features a whole lot of "sports" that most of us would probably consider to be pretty weird and/or barely a sport (hot dog eating, for example).  Still, it's definitely a varied checklist of activities!

Checklist:

MES-1 Tug-O-War

MES-2 Ostrich Racing*

MES-3 Chess Boxing

MES-4 Underwater Hockey

MES-5 Zorbing

MES-6 Sumo Wrestling

MES-7 Sepak Takraw

MES-8 Cheese Rolling

MES-9 Dog Surfing*

MES-10 Cornhole

MES-11 Downhill Boxcar Racing

MES-12 Hot Dog Eating Contest

MES-13 Drone Racing

MES-14 Elephant Polo

MES-15 Armwrestling*

MES-16 Disc Golf

MES-17 Roller Derby

MES-18 Ultimate

MES-19 Quidditch

MES-20 Beer Pong

MES-21 Belly Flopping*

MES-22 Watercross

MES-23 Speed Stacking*

MES-24 Redbull Flugtag*

MES-25 Bo-taoshi

Flags of Lost Nations

If you like flag sets that Flags of Lost Nations is the set for you - it's a set all about flags!  Surprise, surprise!  More specifically, rather than the usual flag sets of current countries, this time around we get flags of defunct countries.  Some countries you'd probably guess would be on the checklist (USSR jumps out to me as one such country) but others are probably more of a nod to true history nerds (Vermont anyone?). 

Checklist:

FLN-1 USSR*

FLN-2 Yugoslavia

FLN-3 Tibet

FLN-4 Sikkim

FLN-5 United Arab Republic

FLN-6 Ceylon

FLN-7 Republic of Salo

FLN-8 West Germany*

FLN-9 East Germany

FLN-10 Czechoslovakia*

FLN-11 Zanzibar*

FLN-12 Zaire*

FLN-13 Tanganyika*

FLN-14 Abyssinia*

FLN-15 Siam

FLN-16 Rhodesia*

FLN-17 Prussia

FLN-18 Persia*

FLN-19 Newfoundland*

FLN-20 New Granada*

FLN-21 Hawaii

FLN-22 Texas*

FLN-23 Vermont*

FLN-24 Ottoman Empire*

FLN-25 Corsica

Folio of Fears

Like most of the mini insert sets in 2018, I've done a rather poor job of collecting the Folio of Fears cards.  In fact, out of the 10 cards in the set I only own four of them.  That's downright depressing!  My percentages across all of the other mini insert sets aren't much better which means I definitely need to devote some much needed collecting time (and dollars) into my 2018 set someday.  After all, I have a fear of "incomplete sets", perhaps incompletophobia or something like that?

Checklist:

MFF-1 Arachnophobia*

MFF-2 Acrophobia*

MFF-3 Entomophobia*

MFF-4 Aviophobia*

MFF-5 Ophidiophobia

MFF-6 Astraphobia*

MFF-7 Coulrophobia*

MFF-8 Claustrophobia

MFF-9 Phasmophobia

MFF-10 Scotophobia

Indigenous Heroes

Topps has done a few different mini sets over the years featuring indigenous North American people.  This set focuses on specific individuals rather than entire tribes and the list is quite varied - everyone from Pocahontas to Jim Thorpe is included.

Checklist:

MIH-1 Mangas Coloradas

MIH-2 Sitting Bull

MIH-3 Cochise

MIH-4 Chief Seattle

MIH-5 Crazy Horse

MIH-6 Geronimo

MIH-7 Tecumseh

MIH-8 Black Hawk

MIH-9 Chief Cornstalk

MIH-10 Victorio

MIH-11 Red Cloud

MIH-12 Squanto

MIH-13 Sacajawea

MIH-14 Chief Pontiac

MIH-15 Will Rogers*

MIH-16 Sequoyah "George Guess"

MIH-17 Pocahontas*

MIH-18 Hiawatha

MIH-19 John Ross

MIH-20 Joseph the Younger

MIH-21 Jim Thorpe

MIH-22 Powhatan

MIH-23 Ben Nighthorse Campbell*

MIH-24 Charles Eastman*

MIH-25 Maria Tallchief

Postage Required

I'm not a stamp collector but it's nice to see another hobby get some baseball card love.  Topps had done some coin cards in the past in Allen & Ginter (albeit not as mini inserts) but now it's stamps that get the love.  At least I have barely over half of this fifteen card set.

Checklist:

MPR-1 Hawaiian Missionaries Stamp*

MPR-2 Benjamin Franklin*

MPR-3 Landing of Columbus

MPR-4 George Washington*

MPR-5 Two Penny Blue

MPR-6 The Declaration of Independence

MPR-7 Abraham Lincoln*

MPR-8 Inverted Jenny*

MPR-9 Benjamin Franklin*

MPR-10 Swedish Three Skilling Banco Yellow

MPR-11 Benjamin Franklin

MPR-12 British Guiana Magenta

MPR-13 Baden 9 Kreuzer Error

MPR-14 Penny Black

MPR-15 Post Office Mauritius*

Super Stealth Minis:

I have no idea how rare these three cards are.  Based on my personal collection, I'm guessing they actually aren't all that rare since I'm missing a ton of 2018 minis overall and yet I own all three of the stealth minis in this "set."  

Checklist:

MS-1 Cuddy Calabrese

MS-2 Benjamin Geaux-Homme

MS-3 Dennis the Rash

World's Hottest Peppers

I like to grow my own vegetables, in fact I have quite a few raised veggies (and herb) beds in my own backyard.  Within those beds, I do grow quite a few peppers including some hot ones...but nothing hot like you see here.  For me, jalepenos, cayannes, and poblanos are all the heat that I need in my own cooking!  

One thing worth noting about the card design for this set is that on the front of each card you get that individual pepper's Scoville Heat Unit (or SHU).  It's a small touch but I like it!

Checklist:

WHP-1 Pepper X*

WHP-2 Carolina Reaper

WHP-3 Trinidad Moruga Scorpion*

WHP-4 7 Pot Douglah

WHP-5 Primo*

WHP-6 Butch T Trinidad Scorpion

WHP-7 Naga Viper

WHP-8 Ghost Pepper*

WHP-9 Komodo Dragon

WHP-10 Trinidad 7 Pot*

WHP-11 Infinity Pepper

WHP-12 7 Pot Barrackpore

WHP-13 Red Savina Habanero

WHP-14 Naga Morich*

WHP-15 Dorset Naga*

Now it is your turn, be sure to cast your vote in the comment section below for your favorite mini insert set from 2018!