The Ultimate Ginter Mini Set Bracket: Seeding Vote #9 (2015)

Quick voting update for the 2014 set:  The Outlaws, Bandits, and Ne'er Do Wells took the crown and will earn one of the top seeds in the final bracket!  Now, on to our next year!

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Welcome to the ninth 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 #9 (2015)

The 2015 Topps Allen & Ginter set followed much of the same pattern as the previous editions of Allen & Ginter when it came to the mini sets.  For the fifth consecutive year, there were a total of 8 different mini sets to complete and for the third time in four years there were exactly 116 total different mini insert cards to try and track down.  As usual, there were a pair of stealth inserts (both ten card sets in their own right).

With that out of the way, let's update our running tally of mini sets and the total number of mini cards in each year's edition of Allen & Ginter:

• 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

Now, let's take a look at the mini sets for 2015!

A Healthy Body

The first of the two stealth inserts for 2015, A Healthy Body celebrates different things that can (not surprisingly) keep your body healthy.  Of everything in this set, the closest I probably come to any of the healthy things was grappling (I wrestled for three years in high school).  Too bad I graduated almost twenty years ago...I think any benefits from those three years of wrestling are long gone now!

Checklist:
BODY-1 Vibrating Belt Machine
BODY-2 Persian Clubs*
BODY-3 Nauheim Baths*
BODY-4 Gymnasticon*
BODY-5 The Turnplatz*
BODY-6 Herbert's Natural Method*
BODY-7 Rope Climbing
BODY-8 Barbell Lifts*
BODY-9 Caber Tossing*
BODY-10 Grappling*

A Healthy Mind

The second of the two stealth inserts for 2015, this set pairs nicely with the Healthy Body set in that it's the other half of what you need to keep healthy:  your mind.  For me, I'm obviously a lot better at keeping my mind healthy, on this list alone I can say I've done pretty much everything on the checklist in the past year or so other than rowing a boat, flying a kite, and shuffleboard.  I actually don't play chess either but I do play a ton of other board games so I'm counting that!  Also, it's worth mentioning that I have managed to complete six of the eight mini sets from 2015 - only the two stealth sets remain (and the cards that I need are indicated by bold font and asterisks as per my usual in these posts).

Checklist:
MIND-1 Rowing a Boat
MIND-2 Flying a Kite*
MIND-3 Riding a Bike*
MIND-4 Reading a Book
MIND-5 Picnicking
MIND-6 Bird Watching*
MIND-7 Shuffleboard*
MIND-8 Skipping Rocks*
MIND-9 Bocce
MIND-10 Chess*

A World Beneath Our Feet

Another year, another insert dedicated to living creatures.  In the past, Topps had sets for sharks, snakes, dogs, and cats (among others).  Now, it's the insects and bugs of the world that get to bask in the glory of their very own Allen & Ginter insert set.  Of course, with as many insects as there are in the world, I do wonder how/why Topps chose this particular group of 15 subjects for the set.

Checklist:
BUG-1 Borneo Walking Stick
BUG-2 Goliath Beetle
BUG-3 Assassin Bug
BUG-4 Devil's Flower Mantis
BUG-5 Seven-Spotted Ladybug
BUG-6 Monarch Butterfly
BUG-7 European Honeybee
BUG-8 Death's Head Hawkmoth
BUG-9 Deer Tick
BUG-10 Pennsylvania Firefly
BUG-11 White-Legged Snake Millipede
BUG-12 Green-Striped Darner
BUG-13 Calleta Silkmoth Caterpillar
BUG-14 Madagascar Hissing Cockroach
BUG-15 Tsetse Fly

Birds of Prey

If you like living creatures but maybe bugs aren't your thing then perhaps I could interest you in a set dedicated to birds instead?  This ten card set features a bunch of birds of prey, mostly owls but there is also a hawk, a vulture, and an eagle among the non-owl birds.  Like the bugs set, I do wonder how Topps ended up with this particular checklist...I kind of wish that the company did a "behind the scenes" post or something where they explain how they came up with some of these checklists!

Checklist:
BP-1 Red-tailed Hawk
BP-2 Bald Eagle
BP-3 Great Horned Owl
BP-4 Burrowing Owl
BP-5 Black Vulture
BP-6 Crested Caracara
BP-7 California Condor
BP-8 Peregrine Falcon
BP-9 Osprey
BP-10 Barn Owl

First Ladies

The First Ladies checklist gives better half of each of the presidents of the United States a chance to star.  Although baseball cards are probably primarily aimed at the male market, it is nice to see an insert set featuring all women (and not the scantily clad type either).  This particular set gives a nice little description of what each first lady did while in office so you can learn a little something while you collect all 41 of the cards!  Clearly this is the largest of the mini sets in 2015.

Checklist:
FIRST-1 Eleanor Roosevelt
FIRST-2 Martha Washington
FIRST-3 Abigail Adams
FIRST-4 Dolley Madison
FIRST-5 Elizabeth Monroe
FIRST-6 Louisa Adams
FIRST-7 Anna Harrison
FIRST-8 Letitia Tyler
FIRST-9 Julia Tyler
FIRST-10 Sarah Polk
FIRST-11 Margaret Taylor
FIRST-12 Abigail Fillmore
FIRST-13 Jane Pierce
FIRST-14 Harriet Lane
FIRST-15 Mary Lincoln
FIRST-16 Eliza Johnson
FIRST-17 Julia Grant
FIRST-18 Lucy Hayes
FIRST-19 Lucretia Garfield
FIRST-20 Frances Cleveland
FIRST-21 Caroline Harrison
FIRST-22 Ida McKinley
FIRST-23 Edith Roosevelt
FIRST-24 Helen Taft
FIRST-25 Ellen Wilson
FIRST-26 Edith Wilson
FIRST-27 Florence Harding
FIRST-28 Grace Coolidge
FIRST-29 Lou Hoover
FIRST-30 Bess Truman
FIRST-31 Mamie Eisenhower
FIRST-32 Jacqueline Kennedy
FIRST-33 Lady Bird Johnson
FIRST-34 Pat Nixon
FIRST-35 Betty Ford
FIRST-36 Rosalynn Carter
FIRST-37 Nancy Reagan
FIRST-38 Barbara Bush
FIRST-39 Hillary Clinton
FIRST-40 Laura Bush
FIRST-41 Michelle Obama

Hoist the Black Flag

All I can figure is that cards featuring pirates and other sailors must sell well or at least help to drive sales.  How else to explain yet another nautical themed set in Allen & Ginter?  This time around, it's all different pirates and while there are some on the checklist that we've seen in earlier Ginter sets (Blackbeard for example) there are plenty of new faces in this ten card set including a couple of women (Anne Bonny and Mary Read).

Checklist:
HBF-1 Blackbeard
HBF-2 Anne Bonny
HBF-3 Charles Vane
HBF-4 Calico Jack Rackham
HBF-5 Capt. Willliam Kidd
HBF-6 Benjamin Hornigold
HBF-7 Mary Read
HBF-8 Stede Bonnet
HBF-9 Black Bart
HBF-10 Henry Every

Magnates, Barons, and Tycoons

Editor's note:  I realize that I scanned the backside of two cards rather than one front and one back as per my normal.  I have to admit, I didn't have the energy or heart to get my 2015 Ginter binder down for the third time to do another scan.  The first time I scanned everything and then put the cards away without realizing the image files got corrupted.  I had to dig everything back out and rescan all eight sets...and again I put things away before realizing I screwed up on the Magnates set.  If you really want to see what the front of the card looks like, I would suggest Google images ;)

Like many towns across America, my town features a Carnegie Public Library so the Magnates, Barons, and Tycoons set does at least indirectly apply to my life!  Of course, JP Morgan is famous now in the financial sector and I'm guessing a number of my readers may have accounts with that particular firm.  All told, this set is kind of like an American History set of the capitalist dream (whether that's a good thing or a bad thing probably depends on your personal situation in life as well as your political leanings but I'll leave that up to you to decide)!

Checklist:
MBT-1 John D. Rockefeller
MBT-2 Cornelius Vanderbilt
MBT-3 James J. Hill
MBT-4 Andrew Carnegie
MBT-5 J.P. Morgan
MBT-6 John Jacob Astor
MBT-7 James Buchanan Duke
MBT-8 Henry Flagler
MBT-9 John W. Gates
MBT-10 Andrew W. Mellon

Mythological Menaces

The final mini set for 2015 is the Mythological Menaces, basically a bunch of creatures from various mythologies around the world.  I do take a slight issue with the word "menaces" in the set's title, I'm not sure that some of the subjects are really menaces (Pan and Hermes, for example, are probably some of the tamer of the Greek subjects that could have been given the "menaces" name tag).

Checklist:
MM-1 Loki
MM-2 Pan
MM-3 The Monkey King
MM-4 Puck
MM-5 Prometheus
MM-6 Wisakedjak
MM-7 Hermes
MM-8 Eris
MM-9 Coyote
MM-10 Nanabozho

Now it's your turn!  Be sure to cast your vote for the best mini set of 2015 in the comments below!