The Ultimate Ginter Full-Sized Insert Set Bracket!: Seeding Vote #9 (2014)

For the first part of the bracket creation, we need to seed the various full-sized insert sets.  I thought it'd be fun to first have a vote for the best insert set within each year and use each year vote winner as a top seed.  From there, I'll fill in the rest of the bracket with the remaining full-sized sets.

I also hope that each of these Seeding Vote posts give you a bit of information about each of the insert sets for a specific year.  That should help with your voting as we move forward into the heart of the Ultimate Ginter Full-Sized Insert 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 by leaving a comment with your choice)!

The 2014 Topps Allen & Ginter set featured SEVEN different full-sized insert sets for collectors to chase after.  This continued the trend of Topps jamming in more and more full-sized insert sets into the Ginter brand, up from six such sets the previous year.  The real question is:  Quantity or Quality for the 2014 set?  You'll decide by voting so let's get to our set previews!  And once again, a big thanks to Check Out My Cards for the card scans I'm using today.

We'll begin with the largest of the sets, the 100-card baseball themed  The Pastime's Pastime.

This set featured baseball players from throughout the game's history including many current players.  The card back discusses what that player does (or did) away from the baseball diamond.  It's certainly a different take on the usual large baseball-centered insert set that Ginter does, plus the front design is unique (it reminds me of a big chalkboard).  

Next, the 20-card Natural Wonder set.

No real surprise here, the entire gist of this set is to celebrate various natural wonders throughout the world.  The checklist includes places such as Iguazu Falls and Luray Caverns.  This is more special to me now than it was a decade ago as I took my family to visit Luray Caverns earlier this summer!

Sticking with a worldwide theme, the next set is the 20-card The World's Capitals insert set:

This set could easily have been more than 20 cards large...and in fact, probably should have been.  Instead, you get the usual suspects for city-themed sets like this (Athens, Rome, Paris, Tokyo, etc.) with hardly any surprises (perhaps Johannesburg and Buenos Aires are the two least common cities for such a set)? 

Next, a visit to the air via the Flying Supremacy set:

This is another 20-card set, however, instead of cities or natural wonders, we get planes of all shapes and sizes.  Although planes aren't exactly in my wheelhouse, I do love when Allen & Ginter includes historical stuff like this in the set.  

However, as much as I like the historical stuff it's probably the true oddball stuff that keeps me coming back to Allen & Ginter year after year.  Case in point:  The 2014 set's Coincidence set:

This 11-card set features a bunch of historical coincidences that I find kind of fascinating.  For example, here's the back of Wilmer McLean & The Civil War's card:

Pretty cool stuff - and definitely an interesting coincidence.

The sixth full-sized insert set from 2014 Allen & Ginter is the 10-card Festivals and Fairs:

Here, you get to learn about various celebrations held around the world including things such as the famous running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain.

Finally, the seventh full-sized insert set is the 10-card Fields of Yore set which returns us to a baseball theme.  More specifically, baseball stadiums of the past (mostly)!

Topps could have chosen a number of different stadiums for this set but I think the probably hit the most famous and popular "fields of yore" for the set.  Here's the full checklist:

• FOY-01 Ebbets Field
• FOY-02 Cleveland Municipal Stadium
• FOY-03 Griffith Stadium
• FOY-04 Metropolitan Stadium
• FOY-05 Wrigley Field
• FOY-06 Yankee Stadium
• FOY-07 Tiger Stadium
• FOY-08 Sportsman's Park
• FOY-09 Astrodome
• FOY-10 Shea Stadium

I do find it interesting that Wrigley Field was included as that stadium is still in use, but otherwise it's hard to argue with the checklist too much.

And that does it for the year 2014!  You have lots of choices this time around, so please, cast your vote via the comments below for your favorite set from 2014.  As a reminder, your choices are:

• The Pastime's Pastimes
• Natural Wonder
• The World's Capitals
• Air Supremacy
• Coincidence
• Festivals and Fairs
• Fields of Yore