Ginter Goodies from The Collective Mind

Want lists: reduced! 

Back in September, GCA from The Collective Mind set me a ton of Allen & Ginter extras to knock down some of my want lists a few notches. I am still working on putting together another stack of cards to send back for this one, but in the meantime I thought I'd show off some of the goods.

It was quite a sad shock to hear about the passing of Roy Halladay. It seems like there's been a lot of lives taken way too young when it comes to MLB lately. Halladay was one of my favorite players not connected to the Cardinals, and I still have vivid memories of his pitcher's duel with Chris Carpenter in the 2011 playoffs. And that's not to mention the day I heard about the no-hitter Doc had going in the playoffs the season before, which prompted me to pop into a sports bar out in the suburbs to see it through to the end.

The early days of the Allen & Ginter revival featured a lot of smiling posed shots like this.

Cap Anson, the original hipster.

I'm not sure I'd consider the Astrodome a field, exactly, but I do really like this insert set dedicated to defunct stadiums.

A tip o' the cap to Carlos Beltran, who is hanging it up after a long, tremendous career.

A tip o' the cap to Gandhi... okay, sometimes these things just don't transition well. Beltran was a fantastic player, but Gandhi was a little bit more important in the grand scheme of things.

The Pastime's Pastimes inserts were so jarring at the time because they used an all black background in a set that traditionally favors lots of white. I guess this was just the precursor to the interesting looking but wholly unnecessary Allen & Ginter X product.

Klosterman is a writer who lives in Portland now. Have you moved to Portland yet?

This tree looks like a giant mushroom.

Apparently someone tried to create a machine to play chess a la Deep Blue, only more than 200 years earlier. Of course, the whole thing was a scam, but the actual story that was passed down seems highly dubious as well.

Thanks again to GCA! You can check out my Ginter and other set want lists here.