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A HUGE Ginter Trade w/ Matt: Part IV: The Minis go on Parade!

Happy Thursday all!  This is the fourth day of the work week - and the fourth consecutive day that I'm featuring cards from an awesome trade with blog reader Matt.  If you missed any of the previous three posts, be sure to check my archives - but for now we move forward to part IV.

*I should have made this a theme week I guess BUT I still haven't finished my ongoing Better Know a Blogger theme "week" and so it felt wrong to have multiple theme weeks open at the same time.

For today's post, we take a look at the plethora of mini inserts that Matt sent me from 2014 Topps Allen & Ginter's (in alphabetical order by set no less)!

If you know your ABCs, you'll realize that a set called Larger than Life wouldn't necessarily be the first set alphabetically to be shown...but as you'll see, the 2014 Allen & Ginter's mini sets were heavily favored in terms of later letters of the alphabet!

The Larger than Life set is one of my favorite mini sets in the 2014 edition of Ginter.  For starters, the card subjects are all varied yet tied together by the theme of being "larger than life."  Matt sent me a bunch of great examples of this idea including Big John Henry, Davy Crockett, and Sasquatch.

In other news, I can now say on this blog that I've found Sasquatch and so that stupid "reality" show can be cancelled on the History Channel (or wherever it is that it is aired)!

Moving on to our next set, we find one focused entirely on cats (aptly named Little Lions).

Last year, Topps put out a set called Man's Best Friend which was all about dogs - it wasn't much of a surprise to see a cat themed set come out the following year.  Unfortunately for me, I'm not a cat person at all (though I love dogs) so this set is only wanted in the sense that I want all Allen & Ginter insert sets!  The Norwegian Forest Cat looks particularly evil too so I don't think this set is going to turn me into a cat person anytime soon!

The third (of five) mini insert sets to feature from 2014 is the Outlaws, Bandits, and All-Around Ne'er Do Wells.

This is another example of a mini set that is perfect for Allen & Ginter's.  The subject matter is fun but otherwise wouldn't belong in a regular baseball card set.  It's also a great learning opportunity - after all how many people know that Juro Janosik was a Slovakian folk hero in the vein of Robin Hood?  Or how about the fact that Jean Lafitte was a smuggler during the early 1800s who used a British request for his land as a base during the war of 1812 as a way to help the Americans defeat the British in the Battle of New Orleans.  Good stuff!

The fourth insert set (again, sorting alphabetically) is the Where Nature Ends set.  This set is chock full of artists - a nice theme to be sure but not nearly as exciting as Bandits and Outlaws!

Matt actually sent me a eight of these but a couple ended up being duplicates thanks to other trades/poor bookkeeping on my part.  That's ok though, the extras will go into my trade bait pile with the hopes of using them to acquire the remaining missing cards from my collection.

Finally, we reach the quintessential Allen & Ginter's mini insert set - one featuring a bunch of deadly creatures.

This particular set is actually called World's Deadliest Predators which is cool in its own right but it may end up limiting Topps in future year's of Allen and Ginter's.  No matter, for now we get to enjoy a set full of creatures you should avoid at all costs.  For me, I think the Australian Box Jellyfish is my favorite of the four cards from this set.

Many, many thanks Matt!  I still have one more post to show off the six remaining cards from the trade - and all six are "hits" including the one non-Ginter card in the trade package.  Stay tuned for that - and in the meantime be sure to check out my want list to see if you have anything to offer me in my quest to complete all of the above sets (plus many more)!




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