2024 Topps Allen & Ginter Value Pack

Greetings!

Hope everyone is doing well.  Both the NBA Finals and the Stanley Cup Final are in full swing.  I'm thinking OKC in six, but if the Pacers win I won't have an issue with that.  Meanwhile, the Florida Panthers are a win away from going back to back, but a Canadian team hasn't won since 1993, so why not root for Edmonton?

Hey, haven't we seen this before?  Well, I had this pack scanned and sitting in my Folder when it was posted.  I still had the pictures, so why not share?

7 bucks for 14 cards.  Let's see what I got:

#74 - Ketel Marte

#12 - MacKenzie Gore

I think the blogosphere wasn't a fan of the design overall.  It didn't seem way too off base compared to prior years, but then again I'm only an occasional A&G collector, so what do I know?

#45 - Matt Olson

#139 - Jorge Soler

There's 350 cards in the set, comprising of veterans, rookies, legends, and special guest stars.  Here's the checklist if you need it.

#102 - Torii Hunter

#126 - Thurman Munson

A couple of legends here.  Big fan of Hunter's game.

#268 - Nicky Cass

#157 - Sonny Gray

Yeah, I had to look up who Nicky Cass was.  Can't say I remember seeing a video of his (I'm not on Tik Tok and rarely use Instagram), but good for him.

#252 - Ted Williams 

#320 - Alex Bregman (mini Gold Border)

The base Bregman would be a short print, so I guess this is a mini short print?  And it's Gold...GOLD!

#GTI-17 Cedar Wood (Got The Itch)

#348 Jack Flaherty

Looks like the odds for the Got The Itch minis are 1 in 52 packs.  It did smell like wood but I'm not up on my trees, so I'll have to trust them when they say it's cedar.  

The last 50 cards in the set are short prints, so yay, I got one!

#BUZ-2 - Honey Bee (Buzzin')

#SOS-30 - Comet (Stars of the Show - The Westminster Kennel Club)

Your odds of running into a bee are 1 in 3 packs, while the odds of finding a pooch was 1 in 4 packs.

Here are some backs because Finals:

Anyway, that's the pack.  You know what you're getting with A&G, so there's no need to get any if you're not a fan.

Hope those who are daddies had a great Father's Day, and thanks for reading!

1992 SkyBox Pre-Rookie AAA Baseball

 

Several years into the rookie card explosion, a few people tried to make the whole concept of a "Pre-Rookie" card a thing. On some level, it makes sense. Rookie cards = magic (for some reason), so why not throw some shine on cards of players before they hit the bigs. Beckett even debuted a magazine dedicated to minor league and college prospect cards around this time. It never really took off in the way that they expecting, I suppose. In any case, here's an old pack of 'Pre-Rookie' branded minor league cards that I ended up with in a recent repack box.

38 - Tom Kramer - These are very similar in design to the previous year's Line Drive sets, only with a new brand name.

27 - Tom Kramer - No relation to Randy as far as I can tell. Here's a glance at the back of these cards. The major league logo is a nice touch for us team collectors that are out there.

165 - Paul Quantrill - Quantrill had one of the better careers of any of the guys you'll see in this pack. He's a former All-Star, a member of the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and is the father of current Marlins pitcher Cal Quantrill.

140 - Todd Burns - I wonder how many times he's heard the Boo-urns joke from the Simpsons?

194 - Rob Wassenaar - The first Portland Beaver (RIP) of the pack. Not bad.

74 - Chris Beasley - The back of the card tells us that Beasley "enjoys baseball card collecting" which, of course, had really taken off by this point.

292 - Derek Bell - I know I've seen a fair amount of this set, but I don't recall seeing the batting champ logo before. It has a very early '90s banking look to it.

281 - Chris Cron - Cron is the father of 2022 All-Star C.J. Cron and has another son (Kevin) who spent some time with the D-Backs.

239 - Reggie Harris - Comin' right at 'cha!

259 - Steve Carter - Well, I just learned that a mud hen is a slang term for a particular bird that looks rather duck-like but isn't actually a duck.

211 - Arthur Rhodes - Rhodes won a ring with the Cardinals in 2011 at the end of a long career as a valuable late-inning reliever.

121 - Dan Walters

268 - Rich Rowland - Here's another coot!

252 - Eric Hillman - One of my early childhood baseball memories was watching Dwight Gooden's Tidewater Tides winning the inaugural (and short-lived) Triple-A World Series. The Portland Beavers won the PCL that season and were among the participants. I just remember how strange it was to see minor league baseball on TV.

184 - J.T. Bruett - Here's the second (and last) Beavers card of the pack. For a team that changed major league affiliations multiple times in my youth, it was still fun getting familiar with all of the future major leaguers.