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The Ultimate Ginter Mini Set Bracket: Seeding Vote #11 (2017)

Before we get to today's vote, let's congratulate the Ferocious Felines - winner of the top seed for the 2016 vote!  Interestingly enough, we now have a cat focused set and a dog focused set as two of our top seeds as we make our into the final week of seeding voting!  Speaking of that, let's get to it!

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Welcome to the eleventh 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 #11 (2017)


The 2017 Topps Allen & Ginter set featured six more "regular" mini insert sets plus an unannounced stealth set that I actually didn't know anything about until I started to do some research for this post!  I'll blame my lack of knowledge about those cards on the fact that in the summer of 2017 my wife and I welcomed our baby boy to the world...clearly my mind was not on baseball cards at the time.  

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
  • 2016:  6 sets, 103 total cards
  • 2017:  7 sets, 129 total cards
Now, let's take a look at the mini sets for 2017!

Bust-a-Move

The Bust-a-Move set celebrates dancing of all kinds.  Each card has an image of the dance on the front of the card (as much as one can have a picture of a specific dance I guess) but the real value is the card back:  a move-by-move rundown of how to complete the featured dance.

Checklist:
BAM-1 Ballet Dance
BAM-2 Bavarian Polka Dance
BAM-3 Belly Dance
BAM-4 Break Dance
BAM-5 Charleston Dance
BAM-6 Cossak Dance
BAM-7 Flamenco Dance
BAM-8 Hula Dance
BAM-9 Irish Dance
BAM-10 Jitterbug Dance
BAM-11 Salsa Dance
BAM-12 Tango Dance
BAM-13 Twist Dance
BAM-14 Waltz Dance
BAM-15 Whirling Dervish Dance

Constellations

If you like glow-in-the-dark cards, then this is the set for you.  The card front my look blank from my scan but it's actually got a glow-in-the-dark printed constellation.  The backside of each card gives you a bit of information about the given star formation.

Checklist:
C-1 Orion
C-2 Ursa Major
C-3 Ursa Minor
C-4 Scorpius
C-5 Cygnus
C-6 Leo
C-7 Perseus
C-8 Hercules
C-9 Aquarius
C-10 Libra

Horse in the Race

The Horse in the Race set was a retail only set and at 25 cards in size it required buying a lot of retail packs to complete it!  Luckily for me, I was able to complete this set almost entirely by trading (and the occasional eBay or COMC purchase).  

Checklist:
HR-1 Friesian Horse
HR-2 Exmoor Pony
HR-3 Shetland Pony
HR-4 American Quarter Horse
HR-5 Camargue Horse
HR-6 American Miniature Horse
HR-7 Grayson Highland Pony
HR-8 Palomino Horse
HR-9 Belgian Horse
HR-10 Bavarian Warmblood Horse
HR-11 East Bulgarian Horse
HR-12 Clydesdale Horse
HR-13 Arabian Horse
HR-14 Shire Horse
HR-15 Andalusian Horse
HR-16 Barb Horse
HR-17 Marwari Horse
HR-18 Scandinavian Coldblood Trotter
HR-19 Arabian Berber Horse
HR-20 Bosnian Pony
HR-21 Percheron Horse
HR-22 Ardennais Horse
HR-23 Mustang Horse
HR-24 Pinto Horse
HR-25 Norwegian Fjord Horse

Magicians and Illusionists

The Allen & Ginter set has had a fascination with the unknown, magic, and similar mysterious ideas for quite some time so it's only fitting that they eventually had a set dedicated solely to magicians and illusionists.  

Checklist:
MI-1 Papus
MI-2 Pamela Colman Smith
MI-3 Arthur Edward Waite
MI-4 Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin
MI-5 P.T. Selbit
MI-6 William Ellsworth Robinson
MI-7 Thomas Nelson Downs
MI-8 Horace Goldin
MI-9 Alexander Herrmann
MI-10 John Nevil Maskelyne
MI-11 John Henry Anderson
MI-12 Howard Thurston
MI-13 Harry Kellar
MI-14 Robert Heller
MI-15 Georges Melies

Required Reading

An insert set all about books?  Sure, in the land of Allen & Ginter, why not?  The neat thing about this set is while every card front looks the same at first glance, you actually get the first couple of lines of each of the featured books if you read it carefully.  Unfortunately, despite the name "required reading" I've done woefully poorly at actually reading most of these texts.  Out of the 15 cards on the checklist, I've only actually read two of these...and one (The Canterbury Tales) was when I was in middle school so I know I didn't actually get much out of it.

Checklist:
RR-1 Walden
RR-2 On the Origin of Species
RR-3 Jane Eyre
RR-4 A Tale of Two Cities
RR-5 War and Peace
RR-6 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
RR-7 Heart of Darkness
RR-8 Moby Dick
RR-9 Wuthering Heights
RR-10 The Canterbury Tales
RR-11 The Illiad
RR-12 The Prince
RR-13 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
RR-14 The Count of Monte Cristo
RR-15 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Super Stealth Minis:
Note:  No images since I don't own any of these.

Overall, I did really well with the 2017 mini insert sets (I've completed all of them except for the four super stealth minis which I've lumped into a single set since the cards are numbered sequentially).  What's interesting (to me at least) is that I didn't even know that any of these four cards existed until I started to put together this blog post!  Even someone like me who loves Allen & Ginter can still be surprised by something in a set many years later - that's part of the charm of Ginter!

Checklist:
AG1 Mike Jasperson
AG2 The Backcountry Kid
AG3 The Pool Player
AG4 Coletrane "Choo Choo" Bisquick

World's Dudes

The largest of the mini insert sets in 2017, the World's Dudes set is basically a set of guys doing random things.  Some of them are fairly common (pilot, tennis, or artist) while others are definitely not so common (chimney sweep, Chilean sailor, or secretary to the Sultan).  

Checklist:
WD-1 Surgeon Dude
WD-2 Conductor Dude
WD-3 Pilot Dude
WD-4 Polo Dude
WD-5 Traffic Cop Dude
WD-6 Hunting Guide Dude
WD-7 Deep Sea Dude
WD-8 Scholar Dude
WD-9 Japanese Sumo Dude
WD-10 Algerian Lawyer Dude
WD-11 Tennis Dude
WD-12 Ferreter Dude
WD-13 Tunisian Editor Dude
WD-14 Packer Dude
WD-15 Barber Dude
WD-16 Chef Dude
WD-17 Newsboy Dude
WD-18 Egyptian Sultan Dude
WD-19 German Snow Patrol Dude
WD-20 English Chimney Sweep Dude
WD-21 Chilean Sailor Dude
WD-22 University Track Dude
WD-23 Lumberjack Dude
WD-24 Violin Dude
WD-25 American Football Dude
WD-26 Farmhand Dude
WD-27 Steel Worker Dude
WD-28 Irish Golfer Dude
WD-29 Boxing Dude
WD-30 Machinist Dude
WD-31 German Cyclist Dude
WD-32 Concession Dude
WD-33 Zookeeper Dude
WD-34 Ornithology Dude
WD-35 Camping Dude
WD-36 Circus Clown Dude
WD-37 Artist Dude
WD-38 Polish Prince Dude
WD-39 Scottish Dude
WD-40 Park Avenue Dude
WD-41 Russian Peddler Dude
WD-42 Scout Dude
WD-43 Fisherman Dude
WD-44 Gardener Dude
WD-45 Secretary to the Sultan Dude

Now it's your turn!  Be sure to cast your vote for your favorite mini set from 2017 in the comment section below!


Comments

  1. Lots of good ones this year but Constellations is my favorite even though it's so small. (seriously they couldn't get the complete zodiac in this plus a few other famous ones and really no Southern Hemisphere constellaions?)

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  2. I recall how popular the Dudes were but they didn't catch on with me. 2017 was a year there were no AG minis added to my collection. I vote for Constellations too. Glow in the dark cards are fun!

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  3. I like the Horse In The Race set.

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  4. If World's Dudes doesn't win this whole thing, I call a mistrial.

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  5. I'll go with Constellations, too, mostly because I don't want Dudes to win! But it really is a clever use of glow-in-the-dark printing.

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  6. Tough choice between Bust-a-Move and World's Dudes. Both have a card I'm very interested in acquiring. Ugh. I guess I'll go with Bust-a-Move. I like the design a tad bit more... and the dance tutorial on the back is pretty cool.

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  7. Voting is closed for 2017.

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