Glowing Ginter

I was happy to see Allen & Ginter include a glow-in-the-dark offering for the 3rd time in the past 4 years with 2020's Where Monsters Live. It's a 10-card mini insert set featuring locations where one might expect to find a monster hiding. I hear it's the easiest such insert to pull in Ginter this year. That's good news for me, since if they were case hits or something, it would be costly to put the set together. But as it is, they sell for a buck or two each and I scored the complete set from an eBay seller for about $15 (could've found a better price if I had a little patience, but I had to snatch up a set on release day).

I tweeted the above gif of the set in action a few days ago and got a big response. As you can see, some cards look better than others in the dark. "A Cave", "The Closet", and "A Sewer Drain" feature tiny eyes that are supposed to glow, but they're too small to really be visible, whether in hand or in photos. But you can tell by the texture that they're supposed to glow. Maybe a logistics misstep by Topps.

I think my favorite of the 10 is Under The Stairs. I didn't even notice the creepy guy back there until I saw the card in the dark. I love when glow in the dark stuff has a surprise like that! Helps the card come alive.

I finally got some 3-ring pages for minis to add them to my glow-in-the-dark binder. They fit 15 minis to a page, so I'm thinking I might like to eventually add 5 dupes so I can complete a page. So yeah, if you end up with any Where Monsters Live cards you don't want, feel free to send them my way.

I've also picked up a few more of the previous glowing Ginter set, the glow-in-the-dark parallels of the base set in 2018. These parallels were case hits, and generally are tough to find for less that double-digits a pop, so I don't have a ton of them, but have been looking out for deals on players I like.

I got Mookie Betts for about $15, which I thought was a pretty good deal for a marquee player. The cards aren't serial-numbered, but the print run was likely less than 20, so they're reasonably scarce.

I was stoked to score this Rhys Hoskins RC the other day. He just had Tommy John surgery on his non-throwing arm. I hope he's back to mashing next season.

Hall of Famer Mike Piazza here.

Big Dave Winfield rocking the brown and gold! [insert a sheepish "Go Padres" here.] This one came with a mini one-touch.. fancy.

And here's probably my best Jackie Robinson card now (one of these days I'll pony up for a vintage Jackie, but haven't yet).

Not pictured, but I've also got Jose Abreu on the way.

My plan was to collect 15 of these glowing parallels so that I could have a complete page. But now, thinking about it, I'm a little over-protective of them since they're not cheap. As a box guy, I'm distrustful of pages. I already learned the hard way that you shouldn't push the mini cards all the way down in the narrow pocket or you probably won't be able to pull it back out without putting some strain on the card, likely dinging some corners and bending the top a bit. I might feel better keeping them safe in their top-loaders and one-touches for now. I think I'll still have a goal to collect 15 of these then stop worrying about them, as I don't want to commit the time and money trying to chase the entire 350-card set. But I can feel good about a 15-card sampler of guys I collect and other random ones that I pulled the trigger on. I'm currently up to 12 or 13, so almost there.

Here's a recap of the 5 new additions in the light.

..and in the dark.

And by the way the first glowing Ginter cards were the Constellation minis from 2017. I posted a breakdown on them last year... figured I should mention them for completeness sake since this post is about glowing Ginter cards. I just put that 10-card set (plus 1 dupe) in a page. I'd eventually like 4 more dupes to fill out the empty pockets.

Fun stuff. I hope they keep it up with more glowing cards in future sets. Here are some suggestions for Topps to run with...

- Ballpark Blueprints that glow in the dark
- Maybe feature long home runs in an insert and have the route of the ball glow.
- Topps is crazy for rookie reprints.. how about rookie reprints that glow in the dark?
- Maybe like "On Fire" inserts with guys' bats on fire or whatever, and then the fire parts glow.
- Would love to see the "Stadium Lights" cards from 2011 Opening Day make a comeback.

So yeah, there are some baseball-centric ideas off the top of my head, but I'd be cool with whatever. How about you? Any ideas for glowing cards you'd like to see?

It's due for an update, but also check out my 
LIST OF KNOWN
GLOW-IN-THE-DARK TRADING CARDS

2017 Allen & Ginter Constellations minis - Glow-in-the-Dark spotlight

Time for another Glow-in-the-Dark spotlight, posting this month about some glowing trading cards out there.

2017 Topps Allen & Ginter Constellations mini inserts

Ginter is known for off-kilter insert sets, occasionally going outside the box with something wonderfully weird, and in 2017 they included a 10-card set of constellation minis. These cards appear to be blank on the front at first glance, though if you take a closer look, you can see the faint constellation. When you get them in the dark, a constellation is illuminated. Kinda neat.

Here's a "night sky" of all 10 cards together. The glowing is fine, but could be brighter. I had to edit the levels on photo(s) a bit to make the glowing stand out more.

Not too interesting in the light. The "blank fronts" confused some collectors/breakers who didn't know about the glow-in-the-dark nature of the cards.

Here's a closer look at the 10 cards.

#1 Orion & #2 Ursa Major:

#3 Ursa Minor & #4 Scorpius:

#5 Cygnus & #6 Leo:

#7 Perseus & #8 Hercules:

And finally, #9 Aquarius & #10 Libra:

I've always enjoyed stargazing, though I never really studied up much on different stars and constellations. I took a beginner astronomy class as an elective back in junior college, and seem to recall earning an A, but haven't retained any of that knowledge, unfortunately. But hey, these cards make for a nice primer for anyone interested in that stuff, so kudos to Topps for working constellations into Allen & Ginter in a unique way.

Ginter? I hardly know 'er!

I was gonna try to hold off buying any 2019 product until Archives, but caved and picked up a blaster of 2019 Alan & Gyntur (sic) at the grocery store while shopping yesterday.

Side note, I've noticed they've started including "anti-theft" tags like these on some of the card boxes on the shelf. That's cool, I guess, but..
- This doesn't help prevent pack-searching (or the rising phenomenon where an asshole buys a box of cards, takes it home, replaces the contents with junkwax cards, then returns the box to the store for a refund).
- In a busy store, they usually don't even bother stopping people when the alarm sounds at the exit.
- There are usually these sticker chip things inside the box anyways.

So it's kind of pointless, but whatever.

Onto the cards!

A few inserts of guys I collect.

Some active dudes I collect.

Retired greats.

The minis treated me well, with this trio of guys I collect highlighted by Mr. Trout.

And my other minis. The monkey infant is pretty cute. These are available for trade. The bottom pair are A&G backs.

Some non baseball. The shuttle card is pretty neat, though seems a little out of place. Post Malone gets my vote for worst card of the pack. I try to keep an open mind on music, but... yuck. And for the Fallon guy, turns out he's from the band The Gaslight Anthem, whom I think are ok, though I often confuse them with a band I like better called Streetlight Manifesto. I guess it's the "something-light" in the name that throws me.

A few more inserts. Also up for trade.

And arguably saving the best for last, I pulled a hit!...

And it's a guy I collect: Didi Gregorius.. Sweet! Though it's a boring plain grey swatch, the card design presents it in an interesting way.. like an eclipse. And hey, I pulled it on the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. How poetic!

So that was actually a pretty solid blaster for me! Pulled a hit of a guy I collect, and a bunch more cards for my collection, not to mention some fresh trade bait. Can't complain about that!
Thanks for reading.

Card Show Conniption

Great haul for me from today's card show. Came home with a heavy backpack full of cards. I'm a little overwhelmed and not sure where to start.

*Deep breath*
Ok, let's start with a dimebox dig-- spent $20 on 200+ cards.

Overview shot.

2017 Ginter X. I completed 2016 Ginter X (with SPs!), but never had much from 2017. There were surprisingly a bunch in the dimebox and I pulled out many guys I collect.

I don't recall seeing these 2003 Playoff Portraits before, but thought they were kinda cool. Textured as if painted. Again, picked out a few PC dudes.

Trade fodder and various shiny cards that caught my eye just-cuz. For 10¢, it's hard to go wrong. There's a Steve Smith #/25 here that's over $10 on COMC, perhaps my best deal of the day.. it'll likely end up with ARPSmith the USC collector next time we trade.

A few non-baseball keepers for me.

Some 90s foil.

Check it out! On the left, that's the Reggie card I mentioned just last post that I was looking for! The one with the KC helmet.. I wonder if Topps shopped that or if it's a legit photo from his early Kansas City Athletics days. Anyhoo.. The cardboard gods smiled upon me. Glad I could score it for just a dime. Threw on a Yankees brother too.

More cards! One of the '64 Brooks "Cards Yo Mama Threw Out" reprints is the rarer "original back" version. The most expensive card I bought for myself today was a Harvey Haddix card that I'll show in a future post, but I figured I'd compliment it with a Golden Age card. (This dimebox dig was actually my last purchase of the day.)

Off-condition vintage! Some of these are pretty rough, but again, they ran me less than 10 cents per. Maybe Bo will trade me for some of them if they don't stick in my collection.

More poor condition vintage. (The Mets team card looks ok from the front, but has paper loss on the back.) Trying to get my 1970 Topps setbuild off the ground.

Finally, the biggest stack from my dimebox dig were all these '72 Toppses. Some of them look pretty darn good from the front, but they've got orange marker on a corner on the back, from some kid (or parent) back in the 70s trying to keep track of the cards. But whatever, I'm not too picky and they'll make fine placeholders in the 1972 set I'm slowly starting to work on.

So there you go. Good use of a $20. "Better than a blaster" as the kids say. That's all for this post. Still plenty more from my card show haul to show off in forthcoming posts. Thanks for stopping by!

Matt Ginter turns 40 (and I'm a published photographer now!)

Damn it, Matt, we're 40 today. I guess it could be worse; we could have not made it to 40. So cheers to us. I don't know about you, but this past year was the year my metabolism finally caught up to me. I used to be able to eat whatever I wanted and drink all the beer I felt like with no repercussions, but no more.. now I've got a beer belly that is stubbornly sticking around despite my frequent trips to the gym. On the plus side, I'm otherwise in peak health despite that nasty finger infection I dealt with a couple months back. A positive outcome there was for the first time in my adult life, I quit the habit of biting my nails. Talk about an old dog learning a new trick!


Turns out I'm the internet's go-to Matt Ginter collector. He's a guy I collect due to the fact that he's the only major leaguer that was born the same exact day as me. A few months ago, a journalist who was working on a piece on him for a hometown periodical approached me for permission to use some of my scans of his cards from old blog posts here. I said sure, of course. Then she said, "er, actually, could you get me better quality pics?, the ones on your blog are crap." (I'm paraphrasing here.) And I said sure. The deal was I would get a copy of the magazine and photo credit therein. A month or two later, it showed up in the mail.

cover (no Ginter content on there)

Very cool that on some very minor level, I can officially consider myself a published photographer. Just like how I consider myself a "professional musician" thanks to that one time my band got paid a few bucks to perform a decade ago. Hey, according to olympic committee rules, that counts!

Here's the article:

Very cool! Seems like a good guy. Big thanks to Whitney for the copy of the magazine. Nice to feel like I've gotten to know my birthday buddy a little closer now.

Here are a couple recent additions to the PC. The uncut proof Bowman refractor shared with Adam Eaton is pretty neat. The 2000 Omega card is shared with Brad Penny and is #'d 431/999.

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12 Days of Christmas Cards and Beermas - Day 12

We've reached the end of this series. Thanks to you guys for following along.

The final beer is a 2017 Reserve edition of The Abyss by Deschutes Brewery. I'm no stranger to Deschutes, with their Black Butte Porter and Mirror Pond Pale Ale being go-to selections around here, but I don't spring for their fancier stuff too often, so this is a nice treat. Thanks again to my wonderful wife for another great Beermas selection.

I don't have a Matt Ginter Christmas Card, but I do have an Allen & Ginter Christmas Card.. close enough! Just got this in this past week in a trade with prominent reader/non-blogger John H. He dropped me an email letting me know he pulled this Stephen Vogt hand-numbered Brooklyn Back Mini out of a blaster of 2016 Ginter, and I was able to swap some of my Giancarlo Stanton dupes for it. Thanks for the trade, John!

Looks like we're getting a white Christmas here in Portland this year. May your days be merry and bright.

Contest update: The entry period will end 12/24/2017 at 11:59.59 PM Pacific Time, so any commenting you wanna do for contest consideration, get it in by then. Give me at least a couple days to figure out the entries and then we'll find a winner or two. Sorry the bonus entry opportunities and additional cards to the prize package kinda dried up at the end there, but I was pretty slammed and just didn't have the time to mess with any non-essential blogging, lol. But trust me, I'll add some good cards to the prize, hopefully tailored to the collecting habits of the winner.

Thanks as always for reading and hope you have a Merry Christmas!