Munnatawket Allen & Ginter + T206 Customs

A while ago I put in bids on some of the Munnatawket Allen & Ginter custom minis that circulate among bloggers, with Nachos Grande at the center of distribution, as his friend is the one who puts them together. I chased these pretty heavily during 2014 and early 2015, and through bidding, trading, whining, begging, and finagling I was able to get a full base set (until the checklist was expanded by 15 cards last month), plus a few variations, inserts, and autographs.

Going back to the auctions I bid on, I wound up just winning one auction for a Floyd Mayweather card. It's a card I already had and I don't much like Mayweather or the things he's done in his life, but when roddster posts up new auctions for these cards I try to at least put in some bids depending on my financial situation at the time. In addition to the card I had won, he packed in a couple of other custom cards from a design he's added to his repertoire, with some artificially-aged T206 customs of Matt Kemp and Ben Zobrist. They are pretty cool-looking cards, and it looks like he really worked on getting the look right for them.

The Floyd Mayweather features the familiar Munnatawket-back design, although there are alternate backs out there for that set. The T206 customs both feature Carolina Brights backs, although there are also alternate backs for these designs. I am always pretty happy to add another batch of roddster customs to my collection.

Breaking it Down 21: Nachos Grande's 2015 Topps Series 1 Group Break

The character who runs the Nachos Grande blog recently held a group break for a case of 2015 Topps Series 1 and I participated in it, snagging a combo spot for the Athletics and Diamondbacks. He is currently trying to fill a group break for a case of 2015 Topps Heritage as well as some extra stuff to add to the potential value, and as of this writing there are still five open spots. Due to the fact that I have blown all of my money on other cards recently I am sitting this next one out, but he usually runs a good break. From a full case of cards I obviously got a ton of base cards, but I am not going to show them here. The first card I received is shown above, a special green ink hand-numbered autograph card from the Munnatawket custom tribute to Allen & Ginter minis. My copy is numbered # 13 / 20. 

My initial batch of inserts contains a nice Randy Johnson Free Agent 40 card, a set highlighting various significant free agents from the 40 years of baseball free agency. I collect Randy Johnson cards as one of my player collections, so this was a welcome addition to my card boxes. Paul Goldschmidt is the Diamondbacks' current big star, and he showed up in my shipment in the Archetypes insert set. The Geneva Conference card is from an insert set that pairs events from world history with events in baseball history. Because the historical moments aren't tied to specific teams, they were randomly assigned to break slots. Biz Markie is a hip-hop artist who came into relative prominence in the late 80's and has managed to parlay his couple of hits into a fairly long career on the fringes of pop culture.

And this is how my kids are likely to remember him:

I was lucky enough to get one of the hits of the break, with a Scott Sizemore autograph. While it is not an earth-shattering card, I can't complain about getting a hit. I also managed to get two of the Topps Buyback cards, for which Topps purchases perfectly good vintage cards and stamps them with a big foil 2015 stamp to insert them in packs. I guess selling a card to customers twice is a pretty good feat if you can manage it. I like the cards well enough, with all that green and gold. Those two Diamondbacks on the bottom row are Rainbow Foil parallels, which are this year's version of the Emerald and Red Hot Foil parallels from 2013 and 2014 respectively. Finally, I needed a sixth card to complete the scan, and I chose the Storm Davis card that was included to protect the outside end of one of the stacks of cards I received. Look at that mullet. It's pretty majestic, like seeing a bald eagle in the wild.

Also included in the package were a couple of these Babe Ruth's Call Your Shot Game code cards. You scratch off one of the foils squares, enter the code into the special game site, and see if you've won something. I chose to scratch off the Autograph boxes and entered my codes. One of the codes was a winner, netting me a random autograph from the Topps 'C' list once I agree to pay $5 in shipping and handling fees. The 'C' list includes pretty much every Major League player Topps has stickers for outside of the players on the 'A' list, which is made up of all of the stars and hot prospects in the game. I'll probably wind up paying my $5 before the game ends, just to see who I end up with.

I can't complain about a relatively cheap group break that nets me two autographs and a handful of inserts, parallels, and foil-stamped vintage cards. Thanks go out to Chris for running the break and putting in all the work to open, sort, pack, ship, and post about the cards for everyone to enjoy.

Mambas, Saints, and Fish: Another Munnatawket Mini Post

I completed the base set of the Munnatawket Allen & Ginter custom mini set, but that doesn't mean I am done collecting the cards. There is an insert set out there called What Could've Been Had They Gone Another Way, featuring famous athletes in uniforms they could have worn if they had chosen another sport/not been traded/not retired. I grabbed this Kobe Bryant mini off of eBay fairly recently. I actually really really don't like Kobe, but what are you going to do when you've got to complete the set? I had been tracking the Tom Brady card, but it sold before I hit the Buy It Now so I went with the Bryant. This one is serially-numbered # 21 / 25.

There were a couple of extra cards in the package when it arrived, including something I hadn't seen before. This set apparently includes Framed Mini Autographs! Through some sorcery roddster has repurposed frames and inserted his own customs into them. This first one features the signature of Father Christmas himself.

Also included was this Billy the Marlin autograph. His penmanship is surprisingly good for a critter with flippers. There were also a couple of the regular-style mini autographs included in the package.

 Here's what I have from the insert set so far, so I've only got two more cards to go.

Here are the backs of the cards, showing off the checklist and the serial number stickers. This is a really neat custom set and it's full of little surprises, just like the Allen & Ginter sets put out by Topps.

At the Trade Deadline 29: Completing the Set Thanks to Nachos Grande

After collating the big box of cards I received from roddster I found that my Munnatawket Allen & Ginter custom set had two holes in it. I didn't want to bother him about it, but I thought maybe I could work out a trade with Nachos Grande to complete the base set. I inquired as to whether he had the two cards, and he responded that he did have spares of the cards I was looking for. I hadn't seen the checklist for the set, so he also let me know that the cards featured David Ortiz and Evan Longoria. I was able to pick up a couple of things from his want list to send back, and soon I got an envelope in the mail containing Ortiz and Longoria, allowing me to fill their slots in the binder pages.

He also included a bonus autograph card from the set and a nice Upper Deck card of Homer Bailey showing off his grip. I thought for sure that I had that autograph card from one of his group breaks in the past, but I couldn't find one in my usual hiding spots and this one found a place in the 'inserts and variations' section of the binder pages.

Thanks for helping me to finish off the set!

A Box of Munnatawket Mini Awesomeness

Around the time I got that Christmas card from the creator of the fabled Munnatawket mini card set, I won a couple of his auctions for cards in the set, Freddie Freeman and Torii Hunter. There was an e-mail exchange in which I apologized for being a cheapass and winning his cards with lowball bids while some of the other cards sold for a bit more and also telling him that I planned to buy more cards from him soon, so he could save on shipping and just hold Hunter and Freeman until that happened, and he asked me if I was serious about putting together the whole thing. I said something along the lines of, "Heck yeah!" and he told me that the package with the two cards in it might be a little bigger than expected. There was more to it, but those were the highlights.

It was definitely a little bit bigger than a two-card envelope. It was a whole box of these things, featuring various quantities of most of the cards in the set. I sorted them out by number and put them all into pages row by row, gaining an immense feeling of satisfaction as the little pockets filled up. The photo above shows the current state of the box, so you can see that there were plenty left over after I took the ones I needed.

He encouraged me to share them with other people, so I have been including a few in each trade package I send out, trying to match subjects in the set to the interests of other collectors. There are some good baseball photos in the set, but some of my favorites include the oddballs like Dirk Nowitzki dressed in a Rangers uniform and holding a basketball.

In true Ginter fashion, the checklist includes figures from outside the world of sports, like Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling. I guess you could call her the founder of a sport, as there is an official U.S. Quidditch league with their own logo, World Cup tournament, and even a concussion policy. It looks like the Lone Star Quidditch Club currently is ranked #1, but their perfect record is held down by a weak Strength of Schedule. It could be argued that #5 Maryland Quidditch and #6 Ohio State Quidditch have the more impressive resumes. My preferred school's team, The Moscow Manticores at the University of Idaho, aren't ranked dead last, but they have a 1-2 record and they are rated last in Strength of Schedule. Interesting stuff.

I don't have a lot to say about this row of cards, but it was on one of the pages I scanned and I had to include it. Also, it's not very often that Justin Verlander gets outdone in a baseball card set, but in this case...

...his girlfriend Kate Upton outdoes him by about 6500%, with the highly sought-after #0 card in the set. I did not receive any duplicates of that one, so you'll have to track it down using your own wiles. I sent a copy of the Spider-Man card to the UK recently as a throw-in with a comic book sketch card I sold to someone there.

This row is full of big names, and also Wil Myers. The rest of these guys should be pretty familiar to baseball fans. It's a little jarring to see Morneau in a Pirates uniform, as he only spent 25 games with that organization. 

I'll close this up with Michael Morse, the current last card in the base set, one of the autographs, and a couple of the photo variations from the set. Actually, I am not sure which versions of Giancarlo Stanton and Manny Machado are the regular cards and which are the variations, but there are (at least) two different cards for them. Cespedes has an Athletics card and a Red Sox card, so the order those go in is more obvious. I have since discovered that there are even more interesting things in this set, but they were part of different transactions and they will get their own posts.

This was among the coolest packages I got last year, and I will be trying to pay this one forward for a long time. So if you get a package from me this year and you're like, "What? I don't remember setting up a trade with this guy," you can thank folks like roddster, Too Many Verlanders/Manninghams, Zippy Zappy, The Prowling Cat, Cards on Cards and Nachos Grande for being so generous and inspiring me to try to do the same. Sometimes I fail, but I have found myself picking things up with other collectors in mind a bit more often lately and looking for one more thing to add to an outbound package.

Thanks for the cards!

My Favorite Christmas Card of 2014

Quite a few bloggers got baseball cards in their Christmas cards this year, and I was happy to be included in that number. I received a Christmas card from Ryan, the creator of the famed Munnatawket custom Allen & Ginter set and in addition to the season's greetings and a thoughtful note thanking me for my blog posts featuring his handiwork, he included some highly-desired cards from his set. The highlight was this Vladimir Guerrero card from the What Could've Been insert set, serially-numbered # 13 / 25. This insert set features athletes in uniforms they could have worn if things had turned out a little differently. This card features Vlad as a Blue Jay. He signed with the team in 2012 and played a few games in their minor league system, but left the organization after they refused to promote him to the major league team. This is a pretty cool idea for an insert set, and it is well-executed.

The base set was recently expanded by 12 cards, and an Astro made the list by way of George Springer in a nice rainbow-hued uniform. This set is very cool and well-executed, and I am always excited to acquire new pieces from it for my collection. It definitely made for a memorable Christmas card. Thank you, Ryan!

What eBay Hath Wrought 119: More Munnatawket Ginter Minis!

Soon after the Nachos Grande blog posted about their existence, the creator of the Munnatawket Allen & Ginter mini set posted a group of the What Could've Been limited insert set on eBay. The set features various sports stars as if they had continued down different career paths, and it is limited to 25 sets overall. I placed bids on all of them, but when the dust settled I had only won one of the auctions, the Russell Wilson card featuring him as a member of the Texas Rangers, the baseball team that drafted him. The other card I really wanted from the set was Vladimir Guerrero, but either the auction went higher than my high price or I got distracted around the time it ended and forgot to check up on it. I am pretty happy with the Russell Wilson card, even though my Denver Broncos haven't yet found a way to crack that Seattle code. This particular example is # 22 / 25. The Munnatawket minis have been pretty quiet on eBay as of late, so I am not sure how many chances there will be to complete even the base set. Card # 0 has been especially elusive. I am still kicking myself for not taking that second chance offer a few months ago when I had the chance.

Then there is the matter of the base set. I am not sure how many cards are in the base set, although I thought I saw the number mentioned in a blog post somewhere (it happens to be the blog post I linked above, and there are 80 total cards in the set). Three additions to my collection were included in the package along with the card I won. I got a Tom Brady, although on this card he is featured in his more recognizable uniform. Also included were Roberto Clemente and Ryan Zimmerman, the other Washington Zimmerman(n).

And here are the backs. I always like getting cards from this set, as Ryan is very generous with the freebies and anticipating what will drop out of the envelope is almost as fun as getting the cards I've won at auction. I don't know that I will ever be able to assemble the full set, but I am going to get as close as I can. I tracked down the cards I do have, and it looks like I've got 15 out of the 80 cards purported to be on the checklist. So I'm nearly a fifth of the way there!

What eBay Hath Wrought 101: The Seedy Underbelly of the Allen & Ginter Bootleg Black Market

I've got searches set up for a lot of different stuff on eBay, so I can get a quick overview of stuff I like on my front page. A little while back I saw an auction pop up for a 2008 Allen & Ginter Spider-Man mini. I couldn't recall that Spider-Man ever made into an Allen & Ginter set, so I clicked the link to check it out. Some seller had posted a bunch of the Munnatawket-back custom minis that were made famous by Nachos Grande. I can't seem to find his posts about them, but he is included in the set and has some connection to the guy who made the cards. I am not sure if he commissioned the set or helped to come up with the idea or what, exactly. But they exist and he was somehow involved.

I put in bids on the Spider-Man card and a handful of others, but I was in the middle of a nap or something when all of the auctions closed and I missed out on everything but the Russell Wilson card. I did see the closing prices on some of the cards, which to me seemed nuts for custom cards. The guy had a Derek Jeter that went for nearly $40. Several other stars from various sports (Wayne Gretzky, Dirk Nowitzki) went in the $6-10 range. Kate Upton's custom card went for over $20. And I think the Spider-Man card sold for about $7. There is a fair amount of design work that went into these and I would imagine the market for them is somewhat limited past the first couple runs that are made, but it sure seems like a good motivator to learn some skills with the modern equivalent of MS Paint and churn out a few customs of my own, mostly focusing on that Derek Jeter dude.

The seller was kind enough to throw a couple of extras in with my shipment. Tom Brady was the biggest surprise, as the seller probably could have got a couple bucks out of it in an auction. Sonny Gray was a nice addition from the A's. I don't have any feelings one way or the other on Christian Yelich.

At the Trade Deadline 18: Unexpected Cards from Nachos Grande

A little while ago I realized that after my latest batch of 2013 Topps Archives, I hadn't checked the duplicates against anyone else's want lists. There were a couple of cards that matched up with the needs of Chris from Nachos Grande. I already had his address, so I sent them away without consulting him first. I feel like I am always trying to catch up on the good karma that the world of card blogs sends my way. I've even been on the good end of a couple lopsided trades with Chris in the past few months, so I felt I owed him.

To make a long story even longer, he sent back a bunch of cards from 2012 and 2013 Archives that whacked some big chunks out of my want list. I just can't beat this guy. One of the cool things I've seen around is bloggers with their own trading cards that they send out with their packages. His is an Allen & Ginter's mini with a Munnatawket back, which I believe is seeded at 1:4 trade packages. 

And before I get into the rest of this post, he has hinted at a new group break that he is working on filling. So far he has only teased the contents of the break, but you should check it out.

There is also a charity break going on over at View from the Skybox. So far it has just hit the break-even point, and needs a few more boxes to fill so that it can generate a donation for the victims of Typhoon Haiyan. He has been offering up discounts on various teams and random team pairs to try to gain traction, so that is something to look into as well.

The first set that got hit was the 1977 Topps Cloth inserts from 2012 Topps Archives. Chris sent 3 cards, which cut my needs from that particular set in half. I hate the cloth texture on these cards and the scratchy sounds they make when I touch them, but I love filling those holes in my binder pages.

Keeping it in 2012, the package also included a 1969 Deckle Edge card of Ichiro. I like the variety of inserts that can be found in the Topps Archives sets. I just wish Topps wouldn't reuse the same designs over and over in the base set.

Next up are two of those dastardly short prints from the base set. I was finally able to finish off the 2013 short prints a little while ago, but the 2012 set still has a ways to go. These two cards will save me a lot of frustration down the road.

From 2013 Topps Archives, I got cards from two different insert sets. One is a retro-themed 1972 Basketball design card of Matt Kemp, and the other is a 1998 Stadium Club Triumvirate card of Mariano Rivera, straight out of the shiny gimmicky insert era. Both were much needed as I continue to pursue the last remaining cards from my 2013 Archives set.

Even the filler cards packed around the Archives stuff were great. They hail from a variety of sets and years, and feature a strong Mariners theme. I have a lot of nostalgia for the Collector's Choice brand, although when I was buying Collector's Choice off the shelf it was always basketball cards. The themes and the branding are largely the same.

This was an unexpected and very exciting package to find in the mailbox. Once again, I find myself owing a debt to the generosity of the blogging community.