What I Bought Instead of Allen & Ginter - 2012 Edition

Alright, 2012 Allen & Ginter has hit the shelves, and it's all over the blogosphere.  If you've been reading this blog for a while now you know that each summer I take the funds I would have used on an Allen & Ginter hobby box and try something a little different.  Here's a review of what I've done the past few years:

2009 - Cheated and purchased an entire base set with SP's, the 75 card National Pride insert set, and the 25 card baseball highlight sketch insert set.

2010 - Got a bit more creative. Used the money to make a variety of purchases...a Jim Lonborg auto, some pretty cool graded cards from Sirius Sports Auctions, finished my 1991 Topps Stadium Club Series 1 set, expanded my Will Clark collection by 125 cards (if you're a Clark fan definitely click that link), added to my 1993-94 SP hockey set, grabbed two graded second-year cards of Red Sox legends, and finally got my first Will Clark auto.

2011 - Built my own Check-Out-My-Cards "Hobby Box".

This year I just don't have the time for anything that requires as much effort as last summer's series of posts.  Instead, I'll have a handful of posts of completely random cards, much like in 2010.  Hobby boxes of Allen & Ginter are running for $90 plus $10 shipping on Dave and Adam's Card World at the moment, so I will use that as my benchmark and keep the total of my purchases to under $100.

Here's the first card for this year's project, a Shaq RC from the '92-93 Skybox set.  I mentioned in a previous post that there were a few O-Neal rookie cards that were the desire of all the kid collectors I knew back in the day, and this was certainly one of the cards I had in mind.  I was around 10 when the Shaq craze swept the nation, and although I didn't collect basketball cards I wanted this one so badly I could taste it.  When I spotted a copy in the small card case at a local pharmacy I knew I had to have it.  A full weekend of chores and yard work later I had come up with the required funds, and walked out of that pharmacy feeling elated with the card in hand.

I'm not entirely sure what happened to that card.  If I had to guess I'd say it's stuffed in a box somewhere in my parents' basement or garage.  Maybe I even traded it away, I don't recall to be honest.  It's funny how as a child something you desired so much in one moment can be forgotten in almost the next.  Now all these years later I have a copy again.  This purchase was totally worth it for the nostalgia factor alone, but aside from that this card has one of the worst backs I've ever seen:

Cost:  $9.00
Shipping:  $0.00
Running Total:  $9.00