Joy of a Completed FrankenSet Page

If there's anyone out there confused whenever I start talking about my Frankenset, well here it is. Let me explain... no, that will take too long, let me sum up.

I like mini cards. I like them a lot. I collect a lot of Allen & Ginter. Not quite enough to even think about completing the mini set though. But I still really like the minis. And I have a ton of 'em. And I like to complete sets.

SO: a couple of years ago I took all my minis and sorted them by number, regardless of which year they were from. I then picked out my favorite from each number and started building an Allen & Ginter mini set numbered 1-350. I put 'em all in pages and the past couple of years I've been slowly adding to the set, filling in some emply pockets in the pages and replacing some cards when I find a better one. So far I've racked 307 cards out of the 350 card set and I still have a couple dozen 2011s to sort through. This page probably causes some convulsions or at least some nervous twitches in the more purist set collectors, but what the hell, I think it's fun.

The ultimate goal for each page is to:
1) consist entirely of cards I like
2) have at least one representative from each set on the page
3) have a good balance from all years, eg. not one card each from 2006 and 2008-2011, and 10 cards from 2007.

Depending on how long Topps pumps out the A&G brand I may have to cut this set off after about 8 or 10 years and start a second one. I've already had to start putting together an 'extended series' of cards that were not quite good enough to make the main set but are awesome nonetheless. Maybe once I officially complete all 350 cards I'll let this set crystallize as is and start that second set. I'll worry about it when the time comes.

While this page is complete, it's still subject to change. There's about 7 cards on here that are pretty much untouchable. Mark Twain,  Prado, Hudson, Sitting Bull, Hoffman, Galileo and Jeter are all going to be almost impossible to knock out of the binder. The rest of the page I'll swap out for the right card. The page is a little heavy in 2006 and 2008 cards. Blake DeWitt is probably safe for a while since he's the only 2009 representative. Biondi is also pretty safe as a black bordered card. Chutley and Coco will probably stick around too. Alex Rios? Nick Johnson? Akinori Otsuka? Yeah, those will probably drop out eventually.

Part of me wants to put all the A&G checklists in a spreadsheet and determine the absolute best possible A&G set and try to build that, much like Ben Henry's "The 792" best set of the '80s project way back in the day. Then I realize that would be a lot of work to put together and even MORE work to accumulate all the cards. This one here is working out pretty good for me so far.