2025 Topps Allen & Ginter pack provides Christmas miracle card
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Whatever gifts one collector may have opened on Christmas, none compared to the card that landed in his lap the next day. Setting the scene a bit, his son had gifted him a Hobby Box of the popular Topps product Allen & Ginter, and his wife opened a few of the packs. The rest is a great hobby story.
Always an eagerly anticipated release, the cards, sometimes referred to as A&G or Ginters (but never Allens for some reason), are a throwback to the earliest days of baseball card collecting. Packaging, logos, and card design all reflect an 1880s aesthetic from when cards were still packaged with cigarettes and the game's biggest stars included King Kelly, Cap Anson, and Dan Brouthers.
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In a typical pack of A&G, cards are attractive, fun, and nostalgic, and include a mix of baseball and non-baseball personalities ranging from Alex the Great to Livvy Dunne to pictures of lighthouses. However, it would be a stretch to call many of the cards in the set life-changing.
Then again, most of the cards in the set do not feature Babe Ruth's autograph. "Cut Signatures" is one of the set's rarest subsets and includes autographs of 47 of the set's subjects. All 47 are what's known in the Hobby as "one of one," meaning each card is completely unique. If you pull the cut signature of Civil War general William T. Sherman (yes, he's in there!), nobody else ever will. Only a single card of each signature was produced as part of the set.
In the case of the 2025 Ginter offering, the "Cut Signature" inserts ran the gamut from widely available player signatures like those of Bob Feller and Pete Rose to grail signatures like Ty Cobb and of course Babe Ruth. Though any autographed card makes for a great pull, cut signatures are often the subject of collector scorn based on the way Topps occasionally truncates part of an autograph to better fit the card frame. On a bad day, for example, Babe Ruth might be Abe Rut and Abraham Lincoln might be Braham Lincol. Fortunately, however, the A&G Ruth that was pulled and posted to the Sports Nonsense trading card group on Facebook was more or less pristine.
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Babe Ruth has a cut signature in 2025 @Topps Allen & Ginter! 🔥 pic.twitter.com/QMdBT4l5oH
— Kasey (@KaseysCards) December 4, 2025
Once the card was posted, several commenters focused on what the once-in-a-lifetime hit might sell for, even though the card's owner indicated it was "currently NFS," meaning currently not for sale. Without a doubt the answer is in the thousands. Still, whether the collector chooses to keep or sell, his incredible hit of December 26, 2025, will remain a priceless memory forever.
Jason A. Schwartz is a collectibles expert whose work can be found regularly at SABR Baseball Cards, Hobby News Daily, and 1939Bruins.com. His collection of Hank Aaron baseball cards and memorabilia is currently on exhibit at the Atlanta History Center, and his collectibles-themed artwork is on display at the Honus Wagner Museum and PNC Park.