The Ultimate Ginter Mini Set Bracket: Seeding Vote #13 (2019)

Quick results from the 2018 vote:  Congrats to Baseball Superstitions which edged out a victory over the Indigenous Heroes mini set.  We have one more top seed to determine and then our bracket will finally be ready for the big show!

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Welcome to the thirteenth (and final!) 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 #13 (2019)

This is it!  The final seeding post for my Ultimate Ginter Mini Set Bracket.  Once this post is finished and the votes tallied, we will be able to construct our amazing Allen & Ginter bracket.  My plan is to leave voting open for at least 24 hours on this post and then start constructing the final bracket.  If I can figure out a somewhat easy way to do so, I may even be able to turn the bracket into a March Madness style contest...I'm still looking into how best to do that (so no promises quite yet)!  

We shouldn't be worrying about the bracket yet anyhow since we still have one more year's worth of sets to consider (and seed).  As usual, let's begin with a running tally of the total number of mini insert sets (and total number of mini cards) for each year including 2019!

• 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
• 2019:  9 sets, 132 total cards

Now, let's take a look at the mini sets for 2019!

Chugging Along:

I didn't do great collecting the 2018 Allen & Ginter set so last year I made a concerted effort to do a lot more trading (and card buying) in order to put a bigger dent in my 2019 A&G wants.  Overall, my efforts were successful as there are only two mini insert sets that I'm attempting to complete but haven't yet actually completed (and one of those will be completed when/if my COMC order from right before the Covid-19 shutdown ever arrives)!  

As for this particular insert set, I can say happily that I own all 15 of the train cards...or actually 14 train cards plus the one trolley card.  I don't really think of a Bullet Train as "Chugging Along" but I guess the title of the card set does fit most of the other subjects within the set.

Checklist:

CA-1 Monorail Train

CA-2 Steam Train

CA-3 Bullet Train

CA-4 Cable Car

CA-5 Electric Train

CA-6 Commuter Train

CA-7 Subway Train

CA-8 Trolley

CA-9 Combined Train

CA-10 Freight Train

CA-11 Mine Train

CA-12 Yard Goat Train

CA-13 Long-Distance Train

CA-14 Heritage Train

CA-15 Overland Train

Collectible Canines:

Another year of Ginter, another dog set!  This particular set is actually quite large (25 cards total) and features many different popular breeds of dog.  When I was in high school and college, my parents had a Bernese Mountain Dog (a great dog) and right now my wife and I have a Golden Retriever (also a great dog).  Selfishly, I'm happy to see both breeds represented within this set!

Checklist:

CC-1 Beagle

CC-2 Boxer

CC-3 Vizsla

CC-4 German Shepherd

CC-5 Siberian Husky

CC-6 Golden Retriever

CC-7 Great Dane

CC-8 Borzoi

CC-9 Dachshund

CC-10 Black Labrador

CC-11 English Bulldog

CC-12 English Springer Spaniel

CC-13 Rhodesian Ridgeback

CC-14 Papillon

CC-15 Yellow Labrador

CC-16 Chihuahua

CC-17 French Bulldog

CC-18 Bernese Mountain Dog

CC-19 Corgi

CC-20 Bullmastiff

CC-21 Weimaraner

CC-22 Shih Tzu

CC-23 West Highland Terrier

CC-24 Boston Terrier

CC-25 Maltese

Dreams of Blue Ribbons:

This is the first of two mini sets that I'm working on but haven't yet completed.  That being said, I have already purchased the final two cards that I need from COMC...they just haven't been shipped out yet.  Thus, I'll be treating this set as if it were complete and you won't be finding any asterisks(*) here denoting set help that I need!

As for the set itself, it is basically a set celebrating a bunch of rather silly competitions that someone could enter (eating hot peppers, pig racing, etc.).  Truthfully, I'm not sure if there is a single competition in the set that I could realistically expect to contend for a blue ribbon!  I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing though.

Checklist:

DBR-1 Partner Carrying Contest

DBR-2 Chili Pepper Eating Contest

DBR-3 Pie Eating Contest

DBR-4 Marshmallow-Stuffing Contest

DBR-5 Toe Wrestling Contest

DBR-6 Sand Castle Building Contest

DBR-7 Potato Sack Racing Contest

DBR-8 Dizzy Bat Contest

DBR-9 Stocking Challenge Contest

DBR-10 Pig Racing Contest

DBR-11 Frog Jumping Contest

DBR-12 Wheelbarrow Racing Contest

DBR-13 Giant Pumpkin Contest

DBR-14 Hot Dog Eating Contest

DBR-15 Three-legged Race Contest

In Bloom:

Easily the most colorful of the mini inserts from 2019 - In Bloom celebrates 25 different species of flowers.  I'll be honest, I'm a vegetable gardener not a flower gardener so I'm way out of my area of expertise here.  That being said, I do like the vibrant colors - certainly fitting for a theme of flowers!

Checklist:

IB-1 Black-Eyed Susan

IB-2 Spurred Snapdragon

IB-3 Shirley Poppy

IB-4 Mexican Hat

IB-5 Sweet Alyssum

IB-6 Lily of the Valley

IB-7 Begonia

IB-8 Moth Orchid

IB-9 Skaapbos

IB-10 Flowering Crassula

IB-11 Crown of Thorns

IB-12 White Candles

IB-13 Golden Shrimp

IB-14 Brazilian Plume

IB-15 Butterfly Bush

IB-16 Camellia

IB-17 Chinese Rain Bell

IB-18 Natal Lily

IB-19 Bird of Paradise

IB-20 Caricature Plant

IB-21 Tulip

IB-22 Rose

IB-23 Johnny Jump Up

IB-24 Marigold

IB-25 Oriental Poppy

In Bloom Plant Me Variation:

Note:  No image since I don't own any of these.

Topps brought back the idea of baseball cards that could be planted in the soil to grow flowers once again for 2019.  However, unlike the last time (2011) this time around the cards were nearly impossible to actually find.  Thus, this is one of the sets that I didn't bother trying to collect for myself.

Checklist:

IBPM-BES Black-Eyed Susan

IBPM-MH Mexican Hat

IBPM-OP Oriental Poppy

IBPM-SA Sweet Alyssum

IBPM-SP Shirley Poppy

IBPM-SS Spurred Snapdragon

Look Out Below:

Look Out Below is a kind of strange name for a set all about waterfalls but I guess I get what Topps was going for here.  There was also a box loader set of Look Out Below cards in 2019 - and being truthful I think the larger sized cardboard was better for waterfall pictures!  That being said, this is still a kind of neat set and certainly fits within the classic Ginter style of insert sets without being a rehash of things that have been done to death already (such as Natural Wonders).

Checklist:

LOB-1 Niagara Falls

LOB-2 Victoria Falls

LOB-3 Iguazu Falls

LOB-4 Kaieteur Falls

LOB-5 Gullfoss

LOB-6 Angel Falls

LOB-7 Yosemite Falls

LOB-8 Ban Gioc-Detian Falls

LOB-9 Horseshoe Falls

LOB-10 Devil's Throat

LOB-11 Huangguoshu Waterfall

LOB-12 Cuquenan Falls

LOB-13 Havasu Falls

LOB-14 Palouse Falls

LOB-15 Ruby Falls

Lost Languages:

Do you like languages?  If so, then perhaps the Lost Languages set will pique your interest since it's an insert set all about languages that no longer exist.

Checklist:

LL-1 Narragansett Language

LL-2 Tasmanian Language

LL-3 Martha's Vineyard Sign Language

LL-4 Upper Chinook Language

LL-5 Plains Apache Language

LL-6 Klallam Language

LL-7 Chiwere Language

LL-8 Shasta Language

LL-9 Jersey Dutch Language

LL-10 Carolina Algonquian Language

New to the Zoo:

This is the retail-only mini set for 2019 and it celebrates baby animals of all types!  This is the only mini insert set that I'm working on completing that I actually still am actively searching for cards for.  At the moment, I still need the Lion Cub, Gorilla Infant, Zebra Foal, and Polar Bear Cub.  Since these are still the most recent of Allen & Ginter releases, perhaps someone reading this has one (or more) of the needed cards available for trade?  If so, hit me up!

Checklist:

NTTZ-1 Elephant Calf

NTTZ-2 Hippo Calf

NTTZ-3 Giraffe Calf

NTTZ-4 Rhino Calf

NTTZ-5 Lion Cub*

NTTZ-6 Panda Cub

NTTZ-7 Fox Pup

NTTZ-8 Penguin Chick

NTTZ-9 Orangutan Baby

NTTZ-10 Baby Shark

NTTZ-11 Seal Pup

NTTZ-12 Gorilla Infant*

NTTZ-13 Kangaroo Joey

NTTZ-14 Tiger Cub

NTTZ-15 Zebra Foal*

NTTZ-16 Otter Pup

NTTZ-17 Polar Bear Cub*

NTTZ-18 Koala Joey

NTTZ-19 Goat Kid

NTTZ-20 Monkey Infant

Stealth Mini (Blowout Cards):

Note:  No image since I don't own this card.

The lone unannounced stealth mini for 2019 was a card of Thomas Fish, owner of Blowout Cards.  That definitely feels a little bit like pandering to Topps' base if you ask me but perhaps it will open the door for Topps to eventually include cards of baseball card bloggers?  Hint, hint Topps!  

Checklist:

MS-1 Thomas Fish - Blowout Cards

And that does it for 2019!  For one last time, be sure to cast your vote below to help finish up the seeding for our Ultimate Allen & Ginter mini set bracket!