The Ultimate Ginter Mini Set Bracket: Seeding Vote #3 (2009)

Welcome to the third 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 #3 (2009)

The 2009 edition of Allen & Ginter featured five different mini insert sets to collect.  For those keeping track of such things, here are the number of insert sets in Ginter from 2006 through 2009.

• 2006:  0 sets, 0 total cards
• 2007:  3 sets, 65 total cards
• 2008:  6 sets, 107 total cards
• 2009:  5 sets, 90 total cards

As you can see, Topps very quickly upped the number of mini inserts in Ginter from 2006 (when there were none) to 2008 (when there were over 100 to collect).  2009 was a slight step backwards but as you'll see just because there were fewer total minis doesn't necessarily mean that the 2009 set was easier to collect in its entirety!

Creatures of Legend, Myth, and Terror

The Creatures of Legend, Myth, and Terror set contains 20 cards seeded 1:48 packs which means you'd expect one of these in every other box you open.  That's kind of crazy for a 20 card insert set (and probably a big reason why I'm still missing three of them (#5:  The Invisible Man, #14:  Griffin, and #15:  Chupacabra).  In addition, I'd like to find a replacement copy for my Dragon (#10) in the set since it has a crease across the back that I somehow didn't notice until I pulled the card out to scan for this post!

The front of each Creature of LMT has a nice drawing of the subject matter while the back of each card has a blurb about the creature.  No checklist to be found on the cards but the cards are numbered numerically at least which helps set collectors.

Thanks to baseballcardpedia though, we do have the full set checklist.  I'm going to continue my tradition of using both bold and an asterisks(*) to denote the cards that I'm still missing.  I'd love to work out a trade if you happen to have any that I need!

LMT1 Bigfoot
LMT2 The Loch Ness Monster
LMT3 Grendel
LMT4 Unicorn
LMT5 The Invisible Man*
LMT6 Kraken
LMT7 Medusa
LMT8 Sphinx
LMT9 Minotaur
LMT10 Dragon*
LMT11 Leviathan
LMT12 Cyclops
LMT13 Vampire
LMT14 Griffin*
LMT15 Chupacabra*
LMT16 Cerberus
LMT17 Hydra
LMT18 Werewolf
LMT19 Fairy
LMT20 Yeti

Extinct Animals

The Extinct Animals set is the first (of two) "stealth" mini inserts in the 2009 set.  Like all of the stealth inserts so far, this is another five card set.  The front of each card features a drawing of the extinct animal while the back of each card features a simple checklist.  The range of animals chosen for this five card set is quite large...one card has a velociraptor while another has a butterfly.  Like Ginter in general, you never truly know what you might get!

Despite being extremely rare (I have been unable to find exact pack insertion ratios), I actually own four of the five Extinct Animals.  Unfortunately for me as a dinosaur lover, the only one I'm missing is the velociraptor (card #1 in the set).

The full checklist for this set:
EA1 Velociraptor*
EA2 Dodo
EA3 Xerces Blue
EA4 Labrador Duck
EA5 Eastern Elk

Inventions of the Future

The second of the stealth mini inserts, Inventions of the Future is another five card insert set this time featuring drawings of future inventions (things like Aeromobiles or Proctecto-Bubbles).  Like the Extinct Animals set, this also features nothing but a simple checklist on the back of the card.  Also like the Extinct Animals, I currently own four of the five cards from this set (I'm only missing #5:  Mental Movies).

The full checklist:
FI1 Aeromobile
FI2 Clock Defier
FI3 Protecto-Bubble
FI4 Here-To-There-O-Matic
FI5 Mental Movies*

National Heroes

The National Heroes mini set is the largest of the mini sets in 2009.  It features 40 different cards.  The design of the front of each card has a small image of the National Hero and then a country's flag or crest alongside the name of the country.  It's a simple design but it works nicely!  The back of each card features a write-up on why that particular person is a national hero for the given country.  The National Heroes were among the easiest mini inserts to find in packs of 2009 Topps A&G (seeded 1:12 packs) and I'm pleased to report that I have completed this set.

The full checklist for the National Heroes set contains many people that I had never heard of prior to the set's release.  I guess that's a sad indication of my knowledge of many other countries and their corresponding history!

NH1 George Washington
NH2 Haile Selassie I
NH3 Toussaint L'Ouverture
NH4 Rigas Feraios
NH5 Yi Sun-sin
NH6 Giuseppe Garibaldi
NH7 Juan Santamaria
NH8 Tecun Uman
NH9 Jon Sigurosson
NH10 Mohandas Gandhi
NH11 Simon Bolivar
NH12 Alexander Nevsky
NH13 Lim Bo Seng
NH14 Sun Yat-sen
NH15 Tiradentes
NH16 Chiang Kai-Shek
NH17 William I
NH18 Severyn Nalyvaiko
NH19 Vasil Levski
NH20 Tadeusz Kosciuszko
NH21 Andranik Toros Ozanian
NH22 William Wallace
NH23 Oda Nobunaga
NH24 Milos Obilic
NH25 Niels Ebbesen
NH26 Jose Rizal
NH27 Alfonso Ugarte
NH28 Mustafa Ataturk
NH29 Nelson Mandela
NH30 El Cid
NH31 William Tell
NH32 Winston Churchill
NH33 Skanderbeg
NH34 General Jose de San Martin
NH35 Janos Damjanich
NH36 Joan of Arc
NH37 Abd al-Qadir
NH38 David Ben-Gurion
NH39 Benito Juarez
NH40 Marcus Garvey

World's Biggest Hoaxes, Hoodwinks, and Bamboozles

The fifth and final mini set for 2009 is a 20 card set that was fairly common to find in packs (seeded 1:12 packs).  That insertion ratio is the same for the National Heroes set but it should be noted that the Hoaxes set is only half the size of the National Heroes (which means the Hoaxes set is much, much easier to complete via ripping packs)!  That said, it's still not too bad to collect (at least back in 2009) and I'm pleased to report that I also have this mini set done (which means I've got 40% of the mini sets done for 2009...a tough year for collecting)!

The design for this set has an image of the Hoax, Hoodwinker, or Bamboozler on the front and then a bit of a blurb about what they did (or the mystery surrounding them) on the backside.

The full checklist for this set:
HHB1 Charles Ponzi
HHB2 Alabama Changes Value of Pi
HHB3 The Runaway Bride
HHB4 Idaho
HHB5 The Turk
HHB6 Enron
HHB7 Anna Anderson
HHB8 Ferdinand Waldo Demara
HHB9 San Serriffe
HHB10 D.B. Cooper
HHB11 Wisconsin State Capitol Collapses
HHB12 Victor Lustig
HHB13 The War of the Worlds
HHB14 George Parker
HHB15 The Bathtub Hoax
HHB16 The Cottingley Fairies
HHB17 James Reavis
HHB18 The Piltdown Man
HHB19 The Cardiff Giant
HHB20 Cold Fusion

That does it for the 2009 mini inserts which means now it is your turn to cast your vote in the comments below for your favorite mini set for the year 2009.