2020 Blake Snell Autograph Count: 6

With two months left in 2020, I am actually going to put a number on my Blake Snell autographs for the year.  I think I can hit 10.  This is card #6, and I have two other Snell autographs that are currently in the mail.  That leaves me a month and a half to find two others.  I think I can do it.  

The newest Snell comes from the 2020 Allen & Ginter X.  It's like regular Allen & Ginter, but with darker card stock. Seems like Snell has signed for this set several years in a row now, might have to start lumping this into the annual autograph category.

Here is the front of the card: 

In the past, I believe these cards were numbered out of 25.  Now, they are numbered out of 50.  I think the gold foil on the black card is also new for this year.  Snell's autograph has changed slightly this year with the first and last name now being separated.  Although, the E at the end of Blake has gone back to being jumbled.  

I like that the regular Allen & Ginter autograph is nicer, but this is still a quality card.  Happy to have it in the collection.  

2019 Blake Snell Autograph Count: 19

I was willing to miss out on this Allen & Ginter X autograph of Snell.  It is serial numbered to just 25, and many of the copies on Ebay had sold for more than what I was willing to pay.  There were several Buy It Nows with the price hovering north of $40.  I lost out on a pair of auctions too, but eventually found one for less than half of the final auction prices I missed out on.

I love the silver ink on the black background.  Great look for the card.

The back is the pretty standard for an Allen & Ginter card.  

One away from 20.  

Those Other Ginter Cards Part 1

A while back Topps started selling an anniversary version of the Allen & Ginter cards with black backgrounds instead of the usual white.  The black background cards were celebrating the tenth anniversary of the product.  The boxes were not prohibitively expensive, but sometimes I get really tired of the whole rehash thing, such as making the cards a different color, adding chrome to the cards.  Sometimes I will dabble into those products, but I usual limit myself by just picking up some interesting singles, or not opening a box and buying the base set.

The set has kind of grown on me over time.  A few of the card groups I am in on Facebook had collectors post pictures of cards from the set.  Very nice.  While I am not going to assemble a set in this case, I am going to put together a nice group of Cardinals, Rays, and former Durham Bulls.  I started by picking up four of the cards pretty cheap off of COMC.

Obviously a good start to the assembling the Cardinals and Rays portion of the full size set.  Still plenty of cards still left to find, especially considering I still haven't touched the minis.  The Cardinals team set looks like it has 14 cards, leaving me 10 short.  The Rays team set has only 5, so 4 away from finishing.  I am going to have to sort through the big list to track down all of the Durham Bulls, but all five Rays cards would also fit into that category too.