Mike Gellner, You're Getting a Card in the Allen & Ginter Set!!!

The checklist for one of Allen & Ginter's mini set. Look at card PP2. Who is that guy???
So I'm going over the preliminary (which means subject to change) checklists for the 2011 Topps Allen & Ginter product and I'm very impressed with the topics for this year's mini cards.

Among the (announced) sets this year are: Animals in Peril, Worlds Most Mysterious Figures, Step Right Up! (a carnival thing), Flowers of the World (in which you can actually, plant the cards and watch flowers grow...that's what I've heard), Uninvited Guests (Haunted Houses and other places that your favorite Ghost Hunters or Adventures Crew have visited...and this is the set I want to collect), Floating Fortresses(Battleships), The Minds that Made the Future (scientists, inventors, and other famous geniuses),The Ascent of Man (the evolution of Man), and Portraits of Penultimacy (famous second bananas, sidekicks,and fiddles).

Many of the subjects of the Portraits of Penultimacy set I recognized:

• The Hare lost the race in the fable "The Tortoise and the Hare"
• Igor was Dr. Frankenstein's assistant
• Sancho Panza ran around with the "Man of La Mancha" Don Quixote
• Tonto's kimosabe was the Lone Ranger
• Dr. Watson was narrator toSherlock Holmes's mysteries
• Toto was the poor dog whisked away to Oz with Dorothy
• Thomas E. Dewey had won over Harry S. Truman in the Presidential Election of 1948 (so said the Chicago Tribune)

One name I had to look up:

Antonio Meucci would have been credited with the invention of the telephone had he renewed the patents for it (some guy named Alexander Graham Bell wound up doing so).

But the last name, while familiar, left me scratching my head.

Mike Gellner.

Mike Gellner. I've heard that name before. But where...

Now I remember!!!

Mike Gellner is the writer of JD's Wild Cardz. He and Nick Jacoby cracked the Ginter Code in 2009, where the prize was inclusion within the 2010 Topps Allen & Ginter set. Because Nick Jacoby (who writes the blog Cardboard Overloadsent in the entry, his picture is featured on the card. But the back of his card explicitly indicates that he and Gellner both worked on the set together. Both Jacoby and Gellner split the autograph prize as well.

Nick cracked the Ginter Code in 2010 as well, so he gets a card in 2011.Congrats once again to you Nick.

But so will Mike Gellner (hopefully with his son JD...Jacoby Drew). He will now get his shot at cardboard immortality as part of this mini insert set in 2011. So congratulations Mike. It's about time.

Sincerely,

JayBee Anama