Here's What I bought Instead of 2 Boxes of Allen & Ginter

One of the best things I've found with the blogging community is that it really exposes me to some of the good and bad around the hobby that I might not see otherwise. Some opinions may be jaded and others might be a bit optimistic, but overall, if you have a question on how good a product is, just read a few blogs and get all the answers you need.

Such was the case with 2011 Allen & Ginter.

For the past few weeks, I have been on a bit of an ebay selling spree. I came to the conclusion that I have WAY too many cards that I really just don't want. Instead of doing the easy thing and just throwing out all those junk wax commons, I decided to try and sell what I could on ebay. Then, with the Paypal I get from my auctions, turn it around and get myself something I really want, and something I would NEVER convince my wife to spend the money on otherwise.

I had every intention of going crazy on Allen & Ginter, but after reading quite a few box breaks, I decided to put the brakes on that. Looking at ebay, I can get a full set with SPs for 40-50 bucks. The motivation to box busting, though, is that you could get a big hit and make more money back than you even spent on the box. I never plan on pulling th ebig hit, though, and since most people weren't happy with a single one of their hits, I figured the best thing to do was spend that Paypal on some cool hits that I want in the first place and buy a full set further down the road.

So, for less than the price most people would have to spend on two hobby boxes of Ginter, here's what I got:

2010-2011 Panini Luxury Suite Johnny Bower auto. An on-card auto of an NHL hall-of-famer. Every other card besides this one came from the same seller (combined shipping, folks!) Just over 10 bucks shipped.

2010-2011 Panini Luxury Suite Marcel Dionne auto. I was very happy to snag this on-card auto for just 8 bucks, probably because he spelled the name "Dionee" in the listing.

As you will no doubt see, I really got into the Luxury Suite cards. What I like about them is Panini's attention to detail. There's nothing worse than getting a "patch" card, where the swatch is just one solid color of a player's number or getting just a sliver of color number two in the corner. They make sure the goods are front and center. They reall made an effort on these cards, and it shows.

I was SO happy to get that Fleury in a light blue swatch. Out of the six single-jersey cards, I ended up paying the most for his, but I absolutely love those sweaters. I was very disappointed when they fazed them out at the Winter Classic last year. Here's some more hockey:

Not too sure where the orange swatch on the Sakic jersey came from. Still, it has a seam running straight down it, which is cool. I also like the bottom right swatch on the Marleau, although I'm not sure which part of the jersey it comes from.

There goes Upper Deck again, not matching jersey colors to photo colors on the Sittler. And with all the buzz in Winnipeg right now, who could resist a dual-swatch Hawerchuk?

Not a hockey fan, you say? Here's some baseball for you.

The presence of Twins autos is what happens when you visit your parents in the upper midwest and get exposed to names you never would have heard otherwise.

Some hall-of-famer relics (and Clark and Thome, too)

And here's some basketball, just for fun.

I got excited about that Antoine Wright, until it came in, and I saw that the swatch is NOT a jersey tag, but a piece of a cheap plasticky basketball used in a draft-day photo shoot. Still, I got the Duncan Dual and Malone relic for under two bucks each.

So there you have it. Call me bitter. Call me jaded. But you can take your Allen & Ginter boxes and I'll have fun with my ebay bargains.

Shameless plug here: If you want to check out what I have on ebay right now, follow this link. After going crazy on these relics, I decided I need to focus more towards one goal instead of just throwing it all over the place. The big goal right now is a Sidney Crosby autographed card from 2011 Goodwin champions. I just posted auctions for autographs of Carl Yastrzemski and Len Dawson, as well as a cut signature called I pulled from 2010 Panini Classics Football.