Hand cut little green foam strips keeping every card snug and safe. Excellent package job from Duane G. in a recent swap of A&G cards and other assorted stuff. Duane is trying to collect the entire 2008 A&G set so I cannibalized some of my World Leaders cards to help him out. Here's some selected highlights of the minis that were in the soft and cushy snap case.
Dinged Corners thinks I look like Vic, and he's not too far off. Combine him with G.K. Chesterton and you have a pretty close resemblance.
Slick Nick totally killed Laura Palmer. He's also the Devil!
I picked out a few normal minis to fill out my A&G mixed mini binder. I had no clue one of the numbers I selected was the Longoria mini. Pretty sweet!
I pretty much traded my George W. card for Vlad the Imputin here. Oddly enough both are now no longer president of their nations, but are still highly influential. Putin by leading the government as Prime Minister, and W in that the government blames everything he did for the gigantic mess we're in while digging us deeper into the dirt.
Another nifty design from the '70s. The name down the side would be seen 10 years later in the baseball set. The action background was seen 20 years before in the 1955 All American football set. The day-glo colors were pure '70s. Paul is a Celtic here, but had his best years as a player and eventually coach of the Phoenix Suns. 
Why are all the girls in the cartoons beauty queens? Why no Mother Teresas or Golda Meirs or Gertude Steins? I don't know why they would ever be mentioned on the back of a basketball card from the '70s, but still. The beauty queen has a mad crossover dribble though. 
Looks like Chet is getting stripped by a Milwaukee player. I had never heard of Chet before, but he was a scoring machine in the '60s and early '70s. Chet is a seven time All-Star with almost 19,000 points in his career. 
Chet was a rookie with the Syracuse Nationals the year before they became the Philadelphia 76ers. He also won a title with the 76ers in 1967 as a teammate of Wilt Chamberlain.
Jim played with the New Orlens Jazz but moved on to Detroit the year they moved to Utah. He also played a few years with the Hawks but 78-79 was Jim's best season in the pros. 
Can someone explain to me why the team kept Jazz as a nickname once they moved to Salt Lake? It's not like the Osmonds were known for their Dixieland sound. 
Detroit legend Dave Bing gets no respect on this card. I love the look on his face as he stares at the cameraman. "Why the heck are you photographing me while I stretch? What's the matter with you??"
The 19667-67 NBA Rookie of the Year had played his last game for Detroit when this card came out. Two more years with the Bullets and one more with Boston and he retired. He was elected tot he Hall of Fame in 1990.
In the last post I mentioned that some '79-80 basketball cards were among the first I ever owned. One of the ones I got way back when was this card of John Long. I've always associated Long with the Hawks even though he only played one year with them. Probably because I had this card for so long. Notice the Washington Bullet player int he background. a ton of photos from these old sets were taken at Washington home games for some reason. 
This was Long's rookie card and the Detroit native had a pretty solid rookie season for the Pistons. He had a good ten year run as a starter before he started coming off the bench. 11 more cards to go and we'll be through that grab bag. There's a few more Hall of Famers, more checklists and a sticker yet to come!
I miss Hampy. I wish he had been able to actually play through most of his time with the Braves. One of the reasons I was a Hampton fan is right here: the guy could really play defense. Look at him blocking the plate and mailing Alex Gonzalez of the Marlins. He didn't steal that Gold Glove away from Maddux, he earned it. 2004 is a pretty good design from Upper Deck too. It's tought to see in the scan but there is a little image of Turner Field in that blue bar under the photo.
This is probably one of Gregs best looking cards. It looks better in person as the gold name and stripe in the blue border is invisible on the scan. The regular version of '93 Score Select is kind of crummy looking with green borders on somewhat cheap stock, but the traded version is nice and glossy. The photo of Maddux is great. Greg is smiling broadly now that he's away from that cursed franchise he used to play for.
2003 Play Ball was basically the Beta version of Goudey. 2004 Play Ball... well you can see for yourself. Looking at this card of my favorite player, I can honestly say that 2004 Play Ball is the most gawdawful ugliest set in the history of forever. If anyone would like to contest this fact make your case in the comments.
Oddly, this was the only card inthe package that was in a penny sleeve and the sleeve was on upside down. I have nothing more to add other than this: BubbaBubbaBubbaBubbaBubba.
Odd, the gold foil scanned weirdly on my card too. That's really the only reason I chose a Co-Signers card for the post. Co-Signers is Joanie and Chachi to Stadium Club's Happy Days.
Ah, I love me some Heritage. Frenchy looked good in Spring Training, but he better get it together in the regular season or the yellow, white and black border on this card will be foreshadowing his trade to the Pirates.
I think this is both my first '08 Playoff Contenders card and my first card of Rohrbough. Cole is part of a wave of Atlanta pitching prospects that is supposed to hit the bigs in the next few years. I'm glad to have the card, but it reminds me of how lame Playoff baseball card designs used to be.
DUFEX!!! Kick ass. This might be the best card in the bunch. I've never had one of these in my mitts before so I'm loving it.
ESPN doesn't appeal to me at all and the '05 card set makes me sleepy. I hadn't realized Javy won an ESPY though, so what the heck, let's share the knowledge. ESPYs are still stupid
With all the problems UD had with this set, I'm actually somewhat surprised that Tim Hudson is not in an A's uniform here. This set is still stupid
Ah, it scans just as lousy as Chrome. I don't care because Chipper is a BRAVE FOR LIFE.
I love the '58 design and Prince Albert has eluded me for two long years.
w00t! Another Phungo card! I will probably have to trade this to Kevin or one of the legion of Indians fans out there though.
I love this set and I am one card closer to completing it now.
Many of you never experienced 2005 Fleer Tradition, the baseball card equivalent of a B-grade horror flick. So incredibly awful that it's awesome. Here's the green and orange nightmare of a back. It's even worse looking on the gray border parallel cards. Russ Ortiz pwned the Bravos in a recent Grapefruit league game, so I figured he deserved a little love.
Red, red card and blue, blue eyes. The eyes would pop out even more had I not screwed up the scan. Awtrey actually had a decent career in the NBA, 12 years performing the "big white guy in the paint" role to perfection. I just like the card for that groovy font for the team name.
Topps used this design for their Basketball Heritage set a few years ago. It's probably the last vintage Topps basketball design we'll see from Topps for a long time, unless they swipe a few for their next Wrestling Heritage set.
I can't remember the year and I don't feel like figuring it out right now. Topps had two checklists for the year, separated into NBA and ABA players. This is a well checked checklist.
Notice the poor sap was only missing 10 cards from his ABA set and one was Dr. J. That makes me sad for that poor collector from 20 years ago.
Hall of Famer with over 14 thousand points and a couple of rings. Better known among card geeks as having a1963 Topps rookie card for his time with the White Sox. All the All-Star cards from this set had the action photo with the floating head on the corner.
1973-74 was Dave's last season, and the cartoon points out his new gig as the Nets' new GM. Gotta love the green text on a red background.
Yeah, a Hawk! Drew was a great scorer for Atlanta and was the guy they traded for Dominique Wilkins. Cards from this set were some of the first I ever had. I pulled them out of a penny box. I thin kI loked them because the basketball with the team name circling it reminded me of Saturn. I was a very geeky little boy.
Now this is how you use red on the back of a card. Black on red, everything's readable except for maybe the card number.
Now that is a classic face. Rembrandt would have loved to paint that face. That face isn't even ruined by the goofy airbrushing of Willie's Detroit Pistons Jersey with, um, Pistons colors. Suns colors are blue and orange! The really stange thing is that Willie didn't play a single game with the Suns, he was with the Sonics (R.I.P) in '75-76. I have an urge to find a green Sharpie and correct this travesty.
This is one of my favorite basketball sets. The design is nice and simple, there's lots of interesting photos in the sets and it's a fairly large set packed with ABA players if I remember correctly. The back is fairly unique too with the big circle o' bio information.