I've finally made it to the last mail package that's been sitting on table! I've been holding off on showing off this particular package until I had gotten through all of my other mail - but finally, the day is here!
So, what's in this final envelope? Well, it's none other than my first "historical mini relic" from the Allen & Ginter brand.
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| Sorry for the poor scan quality, my scanner doesn't like super thick card cases! |
That's a Ancient Rome genuine roman coin from the 2016 Topps Allen & Ginter set. I have a fascination with Ancient Rome so when this particular set came out I was instantly intrigued. Flash forward a few years and I happened to stumble across an eBay auction for the card you see above that went for a price that I was (barely) willing to stomach - and now this gorgeous relic is all mine!
I've mentioned on the blog before that one of the courses that I teach at the college where I work is a course called the History of Mathematics. A good chunk of the class is spent on mathematics of the ancient Greeks and Romans and so I have a lot of interest in that particular time period. In addition, that same class has a travel component to Italy and Greece - and so I especially love getting anything Italy/Roman and/or Greek related in card form!
The back of the relic says that the embedded coin is an authentic roman coin which I think is pretty darn cool.
My grandfather got me semi-interested in coin collecting back when I was little but that particular collecting itch kind of went away, but I guess just enough of it stuck around for me to pull the proverbial trigger on this eBay auction!
Now, before anyone out there asks, No...I am not going to try and complete the full 2016 Ancient Rome relic set. In fact, the set has a whopping 24 different relics in it featuring a number of famous (and some not-as-famous) locations from the ancient Roman world. Here's the full checklist (courtesy of TCDB):
There are a few cards there that I would particularly like to own - The Colosseum, The Pantheon, Castel Sant'Angelo, and Pompeii chief among them as those are all locations where I've taken my History of Math students in the past. That said, don't expect to see any more of these cards on my blog any time soon - they don't come up for sale often and when they do they seem to typically go for super high prices. This is a case where I'm super happy to have the single card that I do own and I don't have any need or desire to collect the rest - sometimes happiness is found in the little things (such as tiny ancient Roman coins)!
Well, I'm going to Rome this summer and was in Athens a couple years ago. Egypt next spring is planned as well. I'm fascinated with the ancient world as well; didn't know A&G had actual Roman relics put out. While great to have something like this in hand, seems like a desecration of history.
ReplyDeleteI hear you on the desecration of history though to Topps' credit the card was designed in such a way that the full coin fits into the open space and thus wasn't harmed in any way (unlike say when Topps cuts up a jersey or a bat for their relic cards)!
DeleteThe coin I don't find so bad. Looking at the checklist initially though, it looked like they took stonework from those locations. But I just went to TCDB and looked at the scans, looks like they are all coins. When I was bouncing around Greece, I was almost scared just touching something, never mind putting it onto a card. But a coin, now I wouldn't mind getting one of those.
DeleteYeah, I think it's all coins (probably from the same pile of coins) with different locations on the cards simply to make the checklist bigger. I don't think each coin has anything to do with each destination (and that's why I'm happy to own one such coin card but feel no need to attempt to add any more to my collection).
DeleteVery cool card. Best of luck tracking down the other few you are interested in.
ReplyDeleteTopps often produces inserts that I think are boring or not needed... but this set isn't one of them. It's super unique and fits the A&G product so well.
It would've been nice if Topps could've put a little more effort into educating people by at least mentioning what kind of coin it is somewhere on the "card". I can't even tell from the scan (the scan is still better than I could've gotten), but curiosity will force me to now go find out what they used.
ReplyDelete