Monday, August 23, 2021

Gawain got me some Ginter

A little padded envelope arrived on the weekend from Gawain. It was a set of this year's Padres cards in the Allen & Ginter retro range. Tony had a base card in the set and Gawain dropped in a bonus as well.

Card Number 713: Topps Allen & Ginter, 2021; #53


I doubt it's deliberate but the pink outline around the picture make it look a bit like Tony is trapped in a giant bubblegum bubble, particularly the wispy bits on the top and bottom. 

I like the look of this card, even though the designer has clearly used the art filter to re-render the photo that Topps used on last year's Topps short print card. 


It was also on the back of this year's card in the Stadium Club range.


They obviously like this photo.

The back is, well, it's what Topps do with Allen & Ginter cards. It's tedious but they've been doing it for so long they aren't going to change.



The bonus card that Gawain generously added in was the mini parallel!

Card Number 714: Topps Allen & Ginter Mini, 2021; #53


Smaller card. Smaller bubblegum bubble effect.


The cardback is just a scaled down version of what appears on the regular card. There are lots of different parallel versions of this card with different cardbacks that sort of replicate cigarette cardbacks of yore (except without any references to cigarettes).

The big news in the baseball card world this week is that Topps are likely to lose their exclusive monopoly to produce cards, with both the Player's Association and MLB signing deals with another company. While I have said for a while that I don't think the monopoly position was particularly helpful to the hobby as it meant Topps weren't being pushed to keep things fresh, I don't think the solution is to have a different company enjoying a monopoly position. 

And the big news in my blogging world this week is that a large selection of cards might be incoming which will keep me posting well past the end of the baseball season and probably into next year! Until then, stay safe everyone and thank you for reading.

Total: 714 cards


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4 comments:

  1. GTTAugust 24, 2021 at 1:52 AM

    Hey, you reached Babe Ruth's number! Congratulations! Now on to Ramanujan's. (1729)

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  2. FujiAugust 24, 2021 at 5:17 AM

    Glad to see Gwynn in Ginter again. Although reusing that photo multiple times is kinda cheesy.

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  3. YoRichaAugust 24, 2021 at 8:41 PM

    I tend to usually like the A&G cards, this year I think they just got lazy. As you noted, the same pic that they have used on many recent issues.
    Lets hope Fanatics, who has never produced a sports card as far as I know, can bring something new to the table when they start firing up the printers.

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  4. JongudmundAugust 25, 2021 at 12:23 PM

    Thank you GTT - always great to know it's a meaningful number!

    Fuji - Tony seems to be a regular in Ginter and that photo is a current staple in Topps. Hopefully they will find a new photo for whatever the next set turns out to be.

    YoRicha - I'm not going to judge Fanatics until I see what they produce. There's been some wailing and gnashing of teeth among Topps fans but I feel it's kind of karmic for the company that pushed for a monopoly to then be excluded from a monopolistic deal.

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