2008 Allen & Ginter Live

I don't care if muscle spasms literally rip my spine completely out of my body, I'm getting my box. I've been having some moral dilemmas about buying this product, but thankfully Kosukegate has been amicably resolved. The Japanese import's card will be in 2008 Allen & Ginter as a no number bonus card. Early indications show it is not especially short printed either. I'm not sure why they chose to not give it a card number, perhaps they misunderstood the hullabaloo caused by #661 in Series Two and thought the real problem was with the number and not the short print. I'd rather have non super short print without a number than a super short print with a number so it's cool by me. It's not like Topps listens to us anyway...

So Fukudome is fixed and boxes hit the shelves tomorrow after a feverish night of case breaking. Here's my long-delayed thoughts on the product due to my seething over Santana.

CRACK THE CODE CONTEST:

This was the other thing from this set that had some collectors excited and made others grumble. On the "Greatest Victories" insert cards there are two rows of jumbled letters. Collect the entire set and you get a code. Crack the code and you get to be the "Champion Codebreaker" on a 2009 Allen & Ginter card. How cool is that? Well, not cool if the first ones to get a chance to crack the code are only dealers breaking cases. Basically, if the code is as simple as B-E-S-U-R-E-T-O-D-R-I-N-K-Y-O-U-R-O-V-A-L-T-I-N-E, us ordanary schlubs have no freaking chance as some guy who is in the middle of ripping his 5th case to post on eBay already cracked it about 12 hours ago. Heck maybe some Taiwanese dude who got his boxes early is already the winner. However, if the code is an honest to goodness CIA-grade cypher, then this could be pretty fun. Make the damn thing hard enough and it could be like that children's book from the 80's where you could find clues to lead you to a gold rabbit that was hidden somewhere that I can't remember the name of and it's going to drive me crazy. At any rate, if the code isn't cracked already I'll do my part by posting any codes I find here for all you sleuths out there. Besides, we're all missing the big picture here... Thismeans that there is definitely a 2009 Allen & Ginter. That's pretty cool, right?

BASE CARDS:

The base design is swiped from the N26 "The World's Beauties" design as you can see from Miss Mary Anderson up there. A good choice by Topps, throwing in a new design instead of changing the color of the text again. The base checklist looks good with a nice mix of current players, legends and weirdness. Gotta love the Air Guitar champion... 351 cards with 50 SPs will keep me busy for a while.

BOX TOPPERS:

There are 15 more N43s, containing the usual suspects: Joba, Howard, Braun, Manny, Prince, Granderson (?), Utley, Wright, Reyes, Big Papi, Vladdy, Ichiro, Hanley, Holliday and Zimmerman (again). Still no Chipper. Maybe in 2009 I guess.

The cabinet cards are done a little differently this year, there are five cards for baseball feats and five for historical battles:
Battles - Battle of Trenton, Battle of Saratoga, Gettysburg, Battle of the Alamo, D-Day
Baseball - 500 Home runs, Three No Hitters, Phillies beat Mets, Rockies vs. Padres Playoff, Red Sox win Series
They look cool, but none of these interest me all that much right now.

Oh, we can't forget the Bigfoot Monster Truck Tire Tread card. Oy Gevalt.

INSERTS:

Dick Perez is out, State flags are in as the 1 per pack insert. I'm gonna end up collecting all of these, I know it.

Flags are out, World Leaders are in as the 1:12 mini insert. Not sure about these either.

Emperors are out, Icons are in as the 1:48 pack mini insert. I wouldn't mind pulling Quetzalcoatl.

There are also Baseball Icons at 1:48 as well. Yep Babe Ruth is in there.

Snakes are out, Sharks are in as the one per case stealth mini insert.
But wait there's more... Pioneers of Aviation. This set looks cool as hell.

There's also the World's Greatest Victories cards with the codes on them.

Oh yeah, there's also a new parallel (as if this set needed it) framed silk mini cards numbered to 10 each. Yippee.

AUTOS, RELICS AND GENERAL STRANGENESS:

It warmed my heart to see not one, but two Chipper Jones Jersey cards on my first 2008 A&G eBay search. Oh yass... one shall be mine. The rest is the same old stuff. One thing I was wrong about: I thought the Wooly Mammoth card would be somewhat common since you can pick up a pile 'o mammoth hairs at cheezy souvinier shops, but there's none on eBay yet. Might be a one of one.

Basically the set is exactly the same as the 2007 set, they copied the previous year's set and threw in some more junk for the hell of it. It's a great set though, and I'll be camping on the doortep of Champion Sports Cards today witing for my box (or two). I got a box last year at 85. I doubt very seriously if that will happen again. I'll get two at that price, any higher and it's blaster city, USA for me, baby. I'll keep ya posted...