We need to seed the various full-sized insert sets for the first part of the bracket creation. It'd be fun to first have a vote for the best insert set within each year and use each year's vote winner as a top seed. From there, I'll fill in the rest of the bracket with the remaining full-sized sets.
I also hope that each of these Seeding Vote posts gives you information about each of the insert sets for a specific year. That should help with your voting as we move forward into the heart of the Ultimate Ginter Full-Sized Insert 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 by leaving a comment with your choice)!
Today, we take a look at the 2016 Topps Allen & Ginter set which actually had fewer full-sized insert sets as compared to the past few years. For 2016, Topps created one large set plus three smaller sets. The largest set was called Numbers Game and it has a 100-card strong checklist.
The Numbers Game set is a celebration of all things related to a particular player's jersey number. The card backs give information about retired numbers by the team, other great players who shared that number on the team, and even other players with that number around MLB. The checklist is a mix of current players as well as plenty of retired stars.
Sticking with the baseball theme, Allen & Ginter had a second full-sized set called simply Baseball Legends that featured 25 past legends of the game.
To me, the Baseball Legends set is kind of redundant with the Numbers Game set also having retired legends in it but what do I know?
Next, we move on to nature with the 20-card set called Natural Wonders.
This set featured a gaudy gold border that definitely made it feel different than other insert sets from the brand. I guess the gold frame is supposed to look like a fancy picture frame, but the photos themselves are too grainy to be truly "frame worthy" if you ask me!
The 9-card Mascots in the Wild set was the retail-exclusive full-sized insert set for 2016.
I appreciate the fact that the set is only 9 cards in size which means it perfectly fills up a single binder page (I find 10-card sets to be the worst as you need one full binder page plus one more page with only a single card slot used). The set itself is a celebration of wild animals that are used as mascots for sport teams. Here's the full checklist for the set:
- MIW-1 Bobcat
- MIW-2 Tiger
- MIW-3 Eagle
- MIW-4 Cardinal
- MIW-5 Bear
- MIW-6 Horse
- MIW-7 Moose
- MIW-8 Elephant
- MIW-9 Parrot
That does it for the 2016 edition of Topps Allen & Ginter. Now, it is your turn to vote! Simply comment below with your favorite full-sized insert set of 2016.
As a reminder, here are the sets you can vote for today:
- Numbers Game
- Baseball Legends
- Natural Wonders
- Mascots in the Wild
Not much to choose from there, Numbers Game by default.
ReplyDeleteAs a fan of uniform related trivia I have to go Numbers Game.
ReplyDeleteThis one is a toughie. Not a big fan of any of these. The concept of the Natural Wonders inserts are cool, but the design wasn't. I guess I'll go with the Numbers Game. Their concept is cool too and have a decent design.
ReplyDelete