Set Review: 2013 Topps Allen & Ginter

"Eclectic" seems to be the word most often used to describe a set of Allen & Ginter cards. And for good reason: any set that, in addition to current and former baseball greats, features golfers, skiers, boxers, gymnasts, standup comedians, super models, TV stars, game show hosts, reggae singers, metal rockers, the Pope, and Abe Vigoda, among others, is not your run-of-the-mill assortment of cardboard. And that's just the base set. Things really kick into high gear (or go completely off the rails, depending on your perspective) once you get into the insert sets. But before spilling too much ink about this year's set, let's first back up and provide a little more context.

Allen & Ginter was a Richmond, Va.-based tobacco company that issued a number of famous card sets in the late 1880s. Known for its attractive hand-painted images and diversity of subjects (which included the likes of Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, and assorted pugilists, wrestlers, and other sportsmen to go along with baseball players like Cap Anson), original Allen & Ginter cards have become widely admired and highly sought after. Then beginning in 2006, well over a century after the long-since defunct tobacco company released its last set, Topps started issuing sets under the Allen & Ginter name, adopting both the visual style and grab-bag approach of its late 19th century predecessor. It didn't take long for Allen & Ginter to become one of the most popular sets in the card universe, and the suspense as to which out-of-left field personalities and oddball insert sets will be included in the latest release has become part of the set's appeal.

The 2013 Allen & Ginter set was released last month, and it definitely doesn't disappoint. The set consist of 350 base cards, the last 50 of which are short prints (1 per 2 packs). The hand-painted images are, as always, pleasing to the eye, and the sturdy card stock further enhances the attractiveness of the product (and makes them ideal items for autographing). Each base card also has a mini parallel (seeded 1 per pack) that's sized the same as the original tobacco cards. The checklist includes most of the top-tier of current MLB players as well as heroes from yesteryear like Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente, and Johnny Bench. Probably the set's most notable card is Yasiel Puig's, as this is the Cuban phenom's first regularly issued card as a Dodger. But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

The non-baseball inclusions are a hodgepodge of personalities from across the pop culture spectrum. In this set, you'll find Olympic gold medalist skier Lindsay Vonn, Let's Make a Deal host Monty Hall, recent U.S. Open champ Justin Dufner, Adam Richman from Man vs. Food, a tie-dye wearing Bill Walton, hard rockers like Tommy Lee and Henry Rollins, and Pope Francis (but, no, there aren't any relic cards with swatches of a papal vestment—about the only thing not in this set). Oh, and again, there's Abe Vigoda because ... of course there is.

The insert sets are multitudinous (double word score). The most conventional is the Across the Years set—but even it has its quirks. It's a 100-card set featuring current and former baseball greats. Pretty straightforward, right? Well, on the back of each card, you learn of an off-the-wall event that occurred the same day the player was born. For instance, I bet you didn't know that on the day Jose Bautista was born, a man named Steve McPeak peddled a 101-foot unicycle or that Cal Ripken's birthday coincided with the lowest temperature ever recorded (minus 127 degrees in Vostok, Antarctica).

From there, things only get more interesting. Here's a sampling of the other insert sets one can collect:

• Civilizations of Ages Past—Featuring cards documenting great ancient nations such as the Mesopotamians, the Mayans, the Vikings, and other bygone societies you've long since forgotten since 10th grade world civilizations class.

• Heavy Hangs the Head—"... that wears the crown," wrote William Shakespeare. Yet I'm sure ol' Bill would agree that the leadership burdens borne by Alexander the Great, Tutankhamun, and Julius Caesar, to name a few from this set, would have seemed much lighter had they realized that someday their historic feats would be memorialized on trading cards.

• Martial Mastery—The bellicose among you will be rewarded with a set documenting the military skill of certain groups like the Spartans, the Samurai, and the Zulus.

• One Little Corner—For all you astronomy buffs who feel that the planets in our solar system have been unfairly slighted by card companies in the past, well, your ship has finally come in.

• Inquiring Minds—Finally, a set (featuring the likes of Aristotle, Kant, and Nietzsche) for philosophy majors who love collecting cardboard. (The Venn Diagram of the overlap between philosophy majors and sports card collectors would show that the intersection consists of ... pretty much just me.)

Can you detect the logical thread that runs through these various sets? Yeah, neither can I. But that random quality is part of Allen & Ginter's charm.

And I'm just scratching the surface. For a full listing of the parallels, inserts, autographs, relic cards (including one with JFK's hairs), variations, rip cards, silks, box loaders, etc. in this year's Allen & Ginter set, visit the Cardboard Connection.

One final note: this is an ideal product for those just getting back into the hobby. I recently bought an Allen & Ginter box to open with my two younger brothers as well as a cousin who had been my main card-trading partner back when we were elementary school kids in the late '70s. Neither my brothers nor my cousin have collected in two decades. Yet they had an absolute blast ripping open the box. The mix of the old and familiar with the fresh and new (and eccentric) made this a very easy product for reacquainting oneself with the joys of opening packs of cards.

As you can tell by now, I'm a fan of Allen & Ginter cards in general and this set in particular. While not cheap, the product isn't cost-prohibitive either: a hobby box consisting of 24 packs (8 cards per pack) and containing three "hits" can be had for around $80. So taking everything into account—design, quality, variety, content, price—I give the 2013 Topps Allen & Ginter set a solid rating of:

★★★★ ½