My First Box of 2024 Topps Allen & Ginter...featuring THREE Case Hits!

If there's one card set release that I look forward to every year, it's Topps' Allen & Ginter set.  This year, I splurged and bought myself a full case of Ginter - and I wanted to share the spoils of my boxes here on the blog.

This year, a hobby box of Allen & Ginter contains 24 packs with 8 card per pack.  Each hobby box promises three hits as well as all of the usual "oddities" that one comes to expect from each edition of Ginter!  A case contains 12 hobby boxes so I have a lot of fun pack ripping to do!

Box 1:

Box topper:

My box topper was Shohei Ohtani, hard to complain about that pull.  I don't think I'll chase after this year's box topper set (but I think I said that last year as well and then ended up building the set, so who knows for sure with me)!  

Base cards:

This year's base design looks good to me, it's unmistakenly A&G, and yet the design holds its own as compared to previous years.  I like the bit of extra color in the background and the framed portrait overall looks classy.  It was nice to find Christian Encarnacion-Strand in my first box as well, a solid rookie card for a guy that I still have high hopes for as a Major League ballplayer.

Parallels:

As usual, Allen & Ginter contains many parallels including mini parallels, A&G back minis, and black bordered minis.  The breakdown for my box was:

• Regular minis:  9 (2 of which were short prints)
• A&G minis:  5 (0 short prints)
• Black bordered minis:  2 (0 short prints)

According to Topps, regular minis are 1:3 packs, regular mini short prints are 1:14, A&G back are 1:6, A&G short prints are 1:65, black bordered are 1:11, and black bordered short prints are 1:131 hobby packs.  Based on those odds, my box was probably slightly better than one might expect given I pulled a pair of regular mini short prints.  

New this year to hobby boxes, there are also chrome mini parallels.  

I ended up with a rookie of Kyren Paris (who?) as my Chrome (the Chrome minis are seeded 1:24 packs, so a true box hit).  

Last year, Topps introduced the idea of a Foil Filagree parallel and that concept has returned this year (along with a rarer Gold Foil Filagree parallel that's seeded 1:208 packs).  I didn't get a gold one, but I did get a 1:25 pack Foil Filagree of Randy Johnson.

I wonder if anyone out will try to complete a Foil Filagree set this year?  It will be a tough task given that the parallels are seeded slightly less than one-per-box!  

Sick of parallels yet?  I hope not because Topps added in even more cards to chase this year - a whole bunch of Chrome stuff!  I had no idea that Chrome cards were in this year's set so you can imagine my surprise when I pulled my first Chrome card.  Turns out, my box was loaded with Chrome parallels beginning with three "regular" Chrome cards (seeded 1:8 packs):

Three solid cards right there, no complaints from me about those.  I also pulled a 1:24 pack Chrome Refractor of Jackson Merrill - a sweet Refractor rookie card!

Again, I have no complaints about my Refractor (and those are also box hits).  Normally, that'd be the end of the Chrome experiment but my box also held a CASE HIT X-Fractor of none other than Jose Altuve:

Seeded 1:289 packs, the X-Fractors are going to be incredibly difficult pulls this year.  Good luck finding one of the guy (or gal) that you collect!  

Full-Sized Inserts:

As usual, Allen & Ginter is chock full of inserts. Some are mini-sized while others are full-sized.  I'll begin with the full-sized inserts because this year sees one of the most creative (and gorgeous) full-sized insert sets in a long, long time:  the X-Ray'd cards featuring animals and their x-rays from the Oregon Zoo.

Seeded 1:7 packs, I beat the odds slightly by landing four of the X-Ray'd cards in my box.  I love, love, love these.  They have a lovely sheen to the cards which coupled with the black background really makes the cards stand out (in a good way)!  The only bummer is that the card backs are identical for each card (other than the card number and the name of the animal featured on the front of the card).

Animals are a big theme in this year's Ginter set and that continues with the 1:7 pack Buzzin' set.

Yep, a set all about bees.  As someone who grows his own vegetable garden each year, I'm happy for the bees to get a little love in a set like Allen & Ginter.  We need the bees.  Save the bees.

The third animal set is the strangely purple Dog set (I couldn't find an official name for this set on Topps' website).  I can say the cards are NOT rare...my box had 10 of the dog cards within it.  This is one of those sets that I'll probably have to hunt around for a bit more information.

I'll be honest, I am a dog person but the purple background is kind of weird to me.  I'm not sure how I feel about this set (don't get me wrong, I'll still try and complete it because that's the kind of A&G collector I am, but I don't think this one will end up as a true favorite insert set despite having a theme that I normally would like a lot).

The next insert is the Sister, Sister set (seeded 1:5 packs). 

I ended up with six cards from the set.  Each card features a pair of "sister cities" from around the world.  It's a fun concept and something I haven't seen included in A&G before (and it's got to be difficult for Topps' designers to constantly try and come up with new stuff worth collecting).

For most boxes, I imagine that's probably it for what you'd find in terms of full-sized inserts.  However, my box had one more full-sized surprise:

That's a Cycle Succession card of Evan Longoria - a short print with pack odds of 1:145 packs!!  In essence, the second CASE HIT of the box (and we aren't quite done with case hits yet)!

Mini Inserts:

Historically, the mini inserts are always my favorite things to collect and this year's A&G showing appears to be right up my alley.  My box yielded five basic mini inserts spread across four different sets:

The Flags of the World are 1:21 packs, the 50 States are 1:21 packs, the Ballpark Bites are 1:35 packs, and the Swamp Creatures are 1:35 packs as well.  Clearly, building the mini sets will be a challenge!

You may have caught me saying that my box yielded five basic minis.  That's because the box also held a sixth mini, but it's from the much, much rarer Got the Itch set:

The Got the Itch cards are seeded 1:124 packs making this yet another CASE HIT for my box.  It's too bad that the cards are so rare because they are super novel.  Each card is basically a "scratch and sniff" card though really you just rub the card a bit in order to release the scent.  My card does have hints of lime when you rub it, super neat concept and well executed by Topps!

Hits:

Truth be told, my box was so packed with goodies (including three case hits) that my actual hits are all bonus to me.  That said, it's still worth taking a look at them since I pulled some nice ones!

First, the full-sized relic of Pete Alonso.  

I do wish Topps would do away with the boring full-sized relics and go back to having only framed relics.  Luckily, this box only had one boring relic - my other relic was of the framed variety:

The framed baseball relics are 1:134 packs if Topps' odds are to be believed.  If that's the case, then good luck completing the framed relic set...  For some reason, I'm doubting (hoping?) that the odds are a misprint and that the framed relics are actually a bit more common than that.  If memory serves, last year you'd get a framed relic in every other box, or something like that.  

My final hit of the box was a framed autograph (seeded 1:226 packs) as it is from the non-baseball set.

Again, I'm hoping that those pack odds are wrong otherwise autographs are also going to be nearly impossible to pull!

Overall, this box CRUSHED my expectations of what a modern A&G box could deliver.  So many case hits (and more if you think the framed relic and auto odds are correct).  I love almost everything about this year's set based on this first box rip experience...and now I have eleven more boxes to get through so let's see what I end up with when all is said and done.  The only unfortunate thing* is that I'm going to be hard-pressed to rip a box in my case that ends up better than this very first box!

*first-world problems, I know.