Two Boxes of 2025 Allen & Ginter: Diminishing Returns

I almost didn't do it.  As you probably already know, Allen & Ginter is the only new product I buy almost every year - including flagship Topps.  This year, I heard ahead of time that there would only be two "hits" per box.  (Not that "hits" are why I buy ANY product in the first place.)  And that the price would be higher, but you wouldn't get as much out of a box as before.  

So I considered just looking for a base/SP/main inserts set on eBay for less than I'd probably invest in boxes and singles to complete that much.  Hopefully I'd find second copies of my PC guys in base and inserts and maybe luck out and get a "hit" from one of them as well.  Boxes were going for $169 on most major dealer sites. 

But I didn't....

I found boxes at Bergen County Cards in New Jersey for $139 each.  That was only $10 more than last year, so I got two.  Unfortunately, they're sold out right now.

 
Let's tear in!

Have to go straight to the first pack, since there are no box toppers, N43s, or buybacks any more.  Take off points for that at the jump... 

 

First card was a musician dude (no idea).  First card I actually saw was the back of Eddie Murray's Sweet Victory insert.  Nice to start with the Orioles at least.  Forgive the warm incandescent lighting in my new card room.  Nothing is going to look white even though most of this stuff is.

So I tore through the packs and sifted out the base, minis, inserts, and shiny parallels.  (Shiny is getting to be a much bigger thing with Ginter.  Can't say I'm overjoyed about it.)  I won't go through every pack, but will just hit the highlights.  Above are all the base minis, A&G backs, black borders, (most of which will be trade bait) then a new N222, a Light the Night insert, and a chrome Matty mini. (Spoken for.) 

The other insert minis from the first box.  Birds and fish have been done before.  Trust me, I researched it a while ago.  Several states elected Cardinals, so these aren't dupes.

A closer look at the N222 and Chrome Matty.  I wish the 222's had retired players too.

Only pulled one Filigree this time.  Don't know this guy either.

And the Chromes and Silvers are at least one per pack now.  I'm already working on two sets of the Silvers from previous years, so I'm not keeping these.  Just need Bo, Torre, Campaneris, Fisk, Sutter, and Mussina in all forms.  Above are all the Chrome Chromes I pulled.

First hit came about halfway through.  Pretty decent player and non-white swatch.  

Second one was a really nice framed mini auto /25.  But I'm not a Survivor fan, or MTV watcher, so Ms. Fitgerald is not familiar to me.

On to Box #2.
Here are the minis for this box.   Beaches are another well-worn subject.  The Ginter Creative Team is phoning this one in for the most part so far.

 Got three filigrees this time, and two HOF'ers.  That's better.

First hit was a Bellinger bat piece.  This one will go to my Pirate/Yankee friend most likely.

The other hit was the prize of the break...

 

 
BOOM!  Double Rip Card!  And with one of my PC guys on the back!

 And it's #1!

Well, if you've seen my posts on how to deal with Rip Cards, you will know that the above images are AFTER I extracted the minis inside.  Don't use the tabs, slice them along the edges.

These are what I got.  A stained glass Oriole (who I don't know either), and an extended series Yordan #372.

And that's about it.  Pretty standard A&G fare, but missing a few things from years past.  I like the base design just fine, but the reduction in extra stuff just leaves the whole thing a bit lacking.  I'll finish the base, SP's and two regular inserts, but that's about all.

Card Room Migration: Phase 3 - Paint

So the walls were all taped and primed, and now to add the color.  What scheme did you guess?  There were a couple comments that got it right.

Yep, went with the burgundy and gold.  Though it's the scheme of the present season Commanders, and not exactly the old DC Native American shade.  But it looks good.

I punched up the official colors online, and Sherwin Williams had the official paints, so I went with it.  The gold went on nice and evenly.

The first coat of burgundy, however, was another matter.

I was afraid it was going to be a disaster.  But my girlfriend is a very experienced painter and told me to trust the process.  It was just going to take a second coat (or more). 

So the second session a week later yielded much better results.  Unfortunately, it was moving day a little before that, so the furniture was in the room.

But we worked around it and it came out fine.  A few days later, we pulled off the tape. 

The tape came off easier and cleaner than we expected.  There were a few small touch up spots, but at this point, they'll disappear behind the furniture and all the cardboard.

Here's the finished product with the furniture in place, at least at that end of the room.  Baseball goes in the cabinet and shelf to the left, and football, hockey etc. goes in the set on the right.  The wire shelf with the bigger sets and Washington football lockers is still at the old house, as well as part of the binders and sets that were in the cabinets.  It will all come together soon.

Next time - Populating the shelves.

Card Room Migration: Phase 2 - Prep Work

Settlement on the house was Oct 29.  Like I said, we started moving boxes (mostly cards) immediately.  And of course, not only was there my collection, but the two dozen-ish monster boxes of my extras, plus what was left of the set collection I was selling, as well as that bulk hoard that I had upstairs.  Needless to say, everyone says I'm never moving again.  Initially, I thought about staging the bulk of my cards in the garage and then moving them upstairs when the room was done.  But I figured it would be better to keep them at room temperature and humidity and only have to move them from the other upstairs room a few steps away.  

This is only a small part of what we moved over the next couple weeks.  Not shown is the closet in this room that has a couple more stacks.  A lot of what you see here is the two other non-collection batches.  The white boxes on the right are my extras.

The old space was two rooms about the same size - roughly square and measuring around 12' x 15' or so, I can't remember for sure.  The new space is 19' x 14', though the one end is a bit shorter, but includes a closet that I no longer have to use for storing other old junk, it's just for cards and accessories.

Here's the short end of the new space.  You can see I stuffed the closet, and then brought in the paint materials.  The old house had all white walls.  This room is probably the only one I will paint a different color, even though every room in the new house has one and often two colors on the walls.  Most of the colors are nice natural shades (seafoam green, tan, grey, etc.).  The card room was the former residents' daughter's domain.  I don't imagine she was a Florida Marlins fan, and neither am I.  (I'm guessing the turquoise and black may be the local high school colors?).  Either way, I've got to change this scheme before I can set up the room.  Can you guess the colors I'm converting to?  Leave your guesses in the comments below.

Step 1 - Taping.  Had to tape both top and bottom of the two mouldings that separate the colors.  The lighting wasn't great, so it was challenging to get it all lined up right at the edge.  That took an entire evening. 

Step 2 - Priming.  Since the top section was black, and the bottom section was such a dark color, it was pretty much a necessity to prime the areas first, so the colors stayed true (hint: they're the official franchise colors - you guess the team).  The priming was pretty easy.  Again it was another whole evening.  

Here's a sneak peek at Hivemind Headquarters from the outside.

And, of course, the packing continued at the old house.

Next time - Color!

Card Room Migration: Phase 1 - Breakdown

Operations in Maryland have been closed since late October.  I started moving boxes of cards the day of settlement 😄. Except for most of my bulk Redskins and some larger sets, the majority of my collection has been moved out.

If you follow the link to my Featured post that's tagged on the Home page (just there to the right -->) of the Hivemind Headquarters as it was, you can see it looked something like this:

 

 

Well, before the furniture move, it looked like this:

 

 

This one is an "in progress" shot of the binder shelves on the right.  Those shelves were cleared and the boxes taken to the new house.  The rack is still there for the moment.  Everything is off the walls and tops of the cabinets and shelves too. 

Even the desk and shelves in the computer room have been cleared. (I'll get the posters soon.)

Stay tuned for the prep work on the new (larger) space!
 

Operations Suspended: Headquarters Moving

Collecting and Trading operations are temporarily suspended due to Headquarters relocation.  HiveMind Headquarters is moving from Thurmont, MD to Fairfield, PA.

I know, it's supposed to be a Borg ship, but this was cooler...

New location will consolidate Collecting Operations into one space of about 19' x 14', which is close to the total of the two previous spaces.  Stay tuned for images of the new setup in a couple weeks.  Automotive operations will also be located completely onsite as well.

Inventory transfer is currently in progress.  Infrastructure and communication setup will commence around Nov. 14.  Further transmissions will be very limited until then.

 
And please fill out the survey if you haven't already ~ thanks to the 36 respondents so far.

Borg At The Door

Census Drones are still cruising through your cyber domain.  Please take the survey if you haven't already.  Only 22 responses so far.

 Take the survey here 

Thanks! 

Victory Is Ours!

I think the bots have finally been turned back!

Reader levels for all posts have returned to normal levels.  Even the Bot Decoy post has only one read this week.  When I check the Stats page, the top ten most-read posts only have teens and single digits next to them now.  The surge has come back down in the charts too:

Just today it looks like only three of my list pages were opened, instead of all of them by dozens of readers.  I'd put up the other charts, but you guys know what I'm talking about....

I hope the casualties were light in the Bot War.  I do not have final reports on Borg ship deployments or battle damage, but it appears that we have defeated the dreaded enemy.  Thanks to our brave warriors for preserving the blog domain.
 

Bot decoy

Check out my 800th post below or at the Older Post link.  I'm making this post because the 800th has 8 survey responses, but over 500 readers.  This post will take the brunt of the bot attack and leave the previous one to a reasonable number of reads, maybe.

800th post

In honor of my 800th total post (around 700th card-centric one), I had grand designs on going back and doing a retrospective of the blog through the years and reinvigorating some of the series I had started, as well as remembering some of the post ideas that I lost along the way. 

But I've been over a month contemplating all this and haven't been able to actually pull it off.  It's taken me since January 20th of 2023 to manage 100 posts.  I used to do 150+ in my prime, but that's been years ago now.  And with the overrun of bots inflating the reader numbers, I fear that our little platform is doomed to corruption.  And I really can't come up with a lot of original ideas.  Do I keep going with the same old thing?

So I crafted a little survey to see what you readers think.  Is it worth continuing?  Or should I just fire up the warp engines and head back to the homeworld?  I'll still read other blogs, but more and more I just don't know if I have a lot to contribute. 

 Take the survey here

I included some standard questions about what you collect, mostly for my own curiosity.  I'll post the results after a good number of you respond.  Hopefully, I don't get a lot of non-human answerers.  Please only respond once.  Thank you!

My Virtual National

(Editor's note: This post has had four digit readership for the last month or so. (7215 total so far.) That can't be real. I changed the title to see if they will quit.  They didn't - changed it back.)

Even though illness prevented me from attending this year in Chicago, I didn't totally miss out on adding cardboard to my collection.

After I had sufficiently recovered, my girlfriend took me to the Morning Sun Marketplace in Thomasville, PA near York.  We walked through the outside flea market and through all three buildings in the course of the day.  One outside dealer had a couple binders with random assortments of mostly newer baseball, football and hoops stars and every card was $5.  

I found this Jordan Addison /8.  I have two others from this Leaf set as well, so I was happy to add this one.  

Inside, we passed through a booth that had lots of supplies and non-sports cards and figures.  I came back and got this set:

It's complete at 100 cards.  Still shrink wrapped.  Not sure if I'll unwrap it or not.

The highlight of the visit was to go through the inventory at Jason's Sports Cards.  I went through his '63 Topps, but they were generally all commons with a lot of repeats, so I didn't get any of those.  He had a lot of jerseys and autos from lesser baseball and football players at the far end of his display, all marked at $4 each.  He said everything was discounted to two bucks as I was halfway through that section.  I snagged up on some Washington hits that I would have normaly passed over, but for that price, why not?

I hit another Jordan Addison in the Vikings row, but all the others are DC.  No JD5's or anything, but some low serial numbers, even if they're rookie jerseys.  The Jason Campbells are all /25.  The rest are in the 2-300s or so.  They'll be added to the pile of DC hits that I've accumulated over the past year and change.  Unfortunately, I don't have the drawer space to put them with the rest of my Redskins+ gamers & autos.

The other source of pasteboard treasures is my man Marv from Michigan.  Didn't get to see him, but he's been supplying me with 1963 Topps in a couple shipments since May or so.  These are the highlights.  Marked prices were reduced at final sale.

Had to cut out a Gibson that was not quite up to par, but these are a few of the big guns in the later series that I can now cross off my list.

Knocked out some of the better combo cards too.  I've seen the Bomber's Best listed for $125 or more.  These aren't perfectly centered, but the more I look at '63s, the less I expect them to be.

So I didn't totally go cold turkey for a month or more missing out on the National.  I've got sources to keep me collecting for sure.

Next up, my 800th total post... 

Launch Status: Aborted

Unfortunately, my plans for the Michigan trip and the National had to be cancelled.  I've been experiencing cyclical fever, fatigue and other symptoms for almost two weeks now.  I just wasn't going to be able to make the drive back and forth, and wade through all the crowds.  So I called it off.

The upside is, it probably saves me several hundred bucks in the short term, and lets me possibly get ahead of all the stuff that's piled up since I went the last time that I haven't put away yet.

But I really would have liked to be able to shop at some of the dealers that I only see there...

Preparing For Launch

Hopefully, in 24 hours, I'll be reporting from Michigan again.  Stuart and I will be starting another shop & show tour along with the trek to the National.  Barring crash, sickness, trampling, or robbery, I'll be back later with multiple posts on our visits and show loot.

I'll be primarily focused on my older vintage projects - '63 Topps, '50 Bowman, '61 Golden Press, '62 Post, and maybe if I'm really lucky, the last three '57 Topps guys named Aaron, Mantle, and Brooks Robinson.

I'm sure I'll find more new Jayden Daniels and Jordan Addisons too.  And I know one of the first dealers I'll go to is the insert guy at the far end of the first section.  Will try not to blow most of my cash on previous years' Heritage short prints....

Anyway, stay tuned...maybe I'll see you there!

Speaking Of Assimilations....

Not sure if five weeks is the longest I've gone without posting, but it's probably close.  I feel like half the time I'm apologizing for my absence on here.  Well, I am sorry I haven't been around, but I'm not sorry about why.  Without going into too much detail, it's basically been a whirlwind romance.  It started late last year, took a while to get going, and then took off about April or so.  We've been dating steadily since May, and it just keeps getting better.  We match so well on so many levels, that it's been relatively easy.  It's amazing to both of us how it's gotten to this point.

But anyway, enough of the mushy stuff, you guys want to see cards!

I did manage to make the July Chantilly show on what used to be Sneak Preview Day (Friday) but is now basically a whole third (first) day.  The show now runs 1PM to 8PM, instead of starting at 5.  I got through the bulk of it all, but really just hit most of my favorite dealers.

This is an amalgamation of several purchases, all of which are for player collections.  The first things I found were the Safelon discs from '76.  I have a big list of '76 and '77 discs for my PC guys, but this flavor wasn't even on it.  Got all but three or so of the guys I seek.  

The Sutter is a '79 Hostess, which are somehow the most elusive year.  I still need about a half dozen of my guys.  Have just about all the rest except for a few SPs.   Bo Jackson was from yet another new unknown football set that just came out.  The Dusty & son is from the current Archives issue, and of course, I will snag anything Jordan Addison.

Knocked out the better part of my '62 Post HOF'ers with this batch from my man Steve B.  Still looking for a good starter lot of commons, but most of the big names are found.  I continued to strike some other vintage-ish wants with him too...

Almost finished the '69 Fleer World Series from the starter I got from the set hoard.  If I'd have started them with Steve, they might be even better.  These were nicer than any I have already.  

These aren't the ones with the team logo stickers, they're the blue backs.

Stepped over to my regular current insert guy and massacred my list of silver parallels to '24 A&G.  There were still two full snap boxes that I didn't go through, but my list was so huge, I was afraid of too many duplicates.  Still ended up with a half dozen of these that I actually didn't need.  Also got some '23 Heritage short prints and a few other misc. items.

Moved on to Stan's and filled out these '61 Golden Press'ers.  Down to Ott, Ruth, Foxx and  and Wagner.

Also got three of the four '65s from him.  The last purchase of the day was the "C. Canizzaro" flavor of the 1st Checklist from Uncle Dicks.  This completes my '65 Topps set!

Thanks for stopping by!  Can't guarantee any better frequency of posting, but I can say that I'm jumping right into the 1963 Topps set.  Stay tuned for that!