Sunday, July 18, 2010

Summertime in the Shopping Aisle

You know it's the heart of summer when, just like an old friend, Allen & Ginter has returned to retail shelves.

Wait... that didn't make any sense? I guess I should spend some more time looking at vintage cigarette ads. At any rate, I was prepared to buy my first blaster of the year on Saturday, but Target only had jumbo packs. The packs looked like they had been picked through like a display of fruit at the grocery store, but I selected two packs to purchase anyway. In fact, none of the packs were even on the rack anymore, but they were laying in a heap as someone had probably already made off with the packs containing the framed cards. Here are two frame-free packs instead.

Pack 1:

179 - Ben Zobrist (Like a number of players in the so-called Year of the Pitcher, Zobrist has experienced a serious decline at the plate this year.)

242 - Jules Verne (If Jules Verne was a baseball player, what position would he play? I'm going to say backup catcher.)
149 - Ichiro Suzuki (Token Ichiro card.)
106 - Dustin Pedroia
46 - Chad Billingsley
93 - Brandon Inge

39 - Josh Johnson (Great pitcher, boring name.)
100 - Matt LaPorta
285 - Alex Rodriguez (A-Rod must be amused with all of the LeBron James backlash. At least, he's probably glad that's not him under the microscope anymore.)
315 - Bobby Abreu (If the past couple of sets are any indication, this must be a short print. I like A&G short prints a lot better than Heritage short prints, because they seem like they're not so impossible to pull.)

74 - Ryan Ludwick Mini A&G Back (First Cardinal! Ludwick has surely had a lot of lousy injury luck in his career. Hopefully he will be back before too long, but in the meantime the Cardinals have gotten a long look at some of the younger outfielders with some success.)

TDH7 - Jason Heyward This Day in History (This is my first Heyward card. The jury is still out on this guy.)

Pack 2:

193 - Hoard & Rory (Disc Dog Champion! Why do I get the feeling my girlfriend is going to adore this card?)
229 - Franklin Gutierrez (The mere fact that Gutierrez has batting third on numerous occasions for the Mariners is really telling about what kind of offense they have.)
200 - Lance Berkman
138 - Javier Vazquez

182 - Chris Carpenter (Carp! People were ready to write him off after just two lousy starts, but he went out and threw a great game Thursday night.)
298 - Jorge Cantu
120 - Nick Swisher (Proof that there wasn't much thought put into the Home Run Derby selection process this year.)
15 - Carlos Quentin
247 - Rajai Davis

127 - Albert Pujols (Maybe this really is an example of Topps being lazy, but Pujols does go into this crouch something like 100 times a game. Then again, that doesn't mean that they need to use that shot all of the time.)

MM21 - Bambiraptor Monsters of the Mesozoic (Bambiraptor! Aw... it's so... cute? I must have this entire set.)
TDH73 - Ian Kinsler This Day in History (What do Ian Kinsler and Galileo have in common? This baseball card, apparently.)

2 comments :

  1. People are real dicks. As if buying retail isn't risky enough, they have to go and search all the damn rack packs.

    Good thing that's not what Ginter is all about anyway.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You know, I pretty much had that same thought about Gutierrez when I watched their game against the Angels yesterday afternoon.

    ReplyDelete

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