Allen & Ginter 2015 Box Break

While there have been a few adjustments over the years, Allen and Ginter has continued to be a product, which although the primary focus is baseball, always has a few twists and turns. This year, some of those include non-sports related mini sets, characters from the Rocky movies, ESPN sportscasters and more. A nice touch was the 10th anniversary buy back cards which come in both unframed (and framed) versions.

The design for 2015 Allen & Ginter is fairly similar to previous years but the portraits do appear to be a bit bigger and feature even more detail than usual. The backs are the exact same design as the previous few years with all the information literally spelled out.

As usual, there are 350 cards in the base set. The boxes have 24 packs with eight cards per pack. Each box says there are three hits between Autographs Relics, Printing Plates, Book Cards and Rip Cards. The short prints are limited to the mini parallel cards and numbered 301-350.

My local card store (Triple Cards in Plano TX) reported selling between 8-10 cases at slightly over $100 per box while leading online retailers are currently at $95-100 per box before shipping. Triple Cards reported his customers were pleased with what they received. One pulled a 19th century original Allen and Ginter card and another landed one of the first certified Topps Ichiro autographs.

Here’s what we pulled out of our box:

Base Cards: 134 of 350. One would need three hobby boxes with good distribution to complete a set.

Minis: Appomattox Court House, Madison Bumgarner, Starlin Castro, Ian Desmond, Stephen Drew, Adam Jones, Jennry Mejia, Derek Norris, Albert Pujols, Jimmy Rollins, Bernie Williams

Mini Allen and Ginter Back: Melky Cabrera, Adrian Gonzalez, Yasiel Puig, Josh Reddick, Stephen Souza Jr., Christian Yelich

Mini Black: Michael Bourn, Felix Hernandez, Matt Harvey

Mini First Ladies; Julia Grant, Margaret Taylor

Mini Magnates Barons and Tycoons: Cornelius Vanderbilt

Mini World Beneath Our Feet: Reduviidae

Ancient Armory: Chu Ko Nu, Flanged Mace, Gauntlet, Trident

Great Scott: X-Ray Diffraction

Menagerie of the Mind: Hydra

Starting Points: Carlos Beltran, Shin-Soo Choo, Michael Cuddyer, Chris Davis, Doug Fister, Carlos Gomez, Hisashi Iwakuma, Corey Kluber, Andrew McCutchen, Anthony Rizzo, Jimmy Rollins, George Springer

What Once Was Believed: Four Classical Elements, Open Polar Sea, Rain Follows the Plow

What Once Would Be: Jetpacks, Mail Via Parachute, Vacuum Tube Trains

10th Anniversary Buy Backs: Adam Dunn, Victor Martinez

10th Anniversary Buy Back Minis: Samantha Briggs, Adam Schefter

Relic Cards; Salvador Perez, Jeremy Roenick

Framed Mini Autograph: Julie Foudy

While Ginter isn’t necessarily a hit-based product, getting seven of them, three of which are promised and four buyback cards, is pretty nice indeed. And unlike the year we pulled both a relic and a framed relic Alex Avila card, we were happy to see three different subjects among our hits so distribution has improved.

One thing is for certain: collectors, dealers and breakers have opened a lot of this product. There are, as of this writing, over 22,000 listings on eBay.

And as always, with the fun, interesting subsets and the mini historical sets, Allen and Ginter again delivers exactly what collectors expect.