I rarely collect baseball cards anymore, especially ones that have little or no connection to Minnesota. Because I love high end, and baseball is more low end focused, I have moved almost completely to football. Every once in a while, I splurge on something that I “cant live without” in my collection, but that type of situation is becoming more and more infrequent. I posted a while ago about my personal white whale Joe Mauer card, and honestly I have not really invested much into buying a baseball card since then. One of the main reasons is that my favorite players are either unfortunately dead or don’t sign much (Mauer), but that looks to be changing with products for 2011. The first evidence of this great turn of events is in the recent release of 2011 Topps Allen & Ginter, where Mauer has his first on card autograph in years (UD Goudey baseball was the last one). Hell, it may be his first ACTUAL autograph in years.

Habitual mass case breaker Brent Williams has become a pseudo celebrity in the hobby for his huge breaks of products that lend themselves well to ripping en masse. For those unfamiliar, he breaks up to 40 cases of product at a time, and sells most of his cards on eBay or through his Twitter account. When I saw that he was probably a good shot to pull one of the elusive Mauer framed mini autos in his initial break of 25 cases, I paid very close attention to his Twitter updates. Sure enough, after pulling bat knobs, 2 George W Bush autographs, and just about every other card in this set, he pulled the Mauer I was looking for.

After some negotiating, we came to a deal for the card. Unfortunately, it’s a redemption, but when you are someone like me who loves on card autographs, and loves the look of the Ginter cards, you have to jump at this kind of opportunity. Mauer’s card looks awesome this year, and I sincerely hope the autograph is made with similar care. It looks to be one of the rarest of the rare, and I although I paid more for this card than I ever have for one in my Mauer collection, I am still VERY excited to hopefully get this card in my hands.

Check out Brent on Twitter Here, and visit his eBay items for just about everything you could ever want out of this product and more. For a photo walkthrough of his break, his new site at www.brentandbecca.com is a great place to start.