This post is a hoax

I thought I'd dedicate this post to my all-time favorite Allen and Ginter insert set, the 2009 A&G "World's Biggest Hoaxes, Hoodwinks, and Bamboozles" cards.

These are fascinating cards. The tale of "The Turk" (top-right in the photo) is amazing. An 18th-century "machine" was designed to play a game of chess, like a computer would do today. It apparently "bamboozled" players such as Napoleon and Benjamin Franklin, beating each of them in chess games.

In actuality, there was a human (who was evidently an amazing chess player) inside the "machine", controlling its every move.

The sheer randomness of this set is what makes it so great. You've got everything from a man who almost sold the Eiffel Tower (top row, second from left) to fictional fairies (bottom left) to cold fusion (bottom right).

The Eiffel Tower hoax is an interesting tale. In 1925, the Czech-born Victor Lustig posed as a French official, actually convincing a scrap metal company to purchase the tower from him because it was "too expensive to maintain". The Eiffel Tower almost sold for scrap metal. Wow.

I know a lot of other collectors aren't huge fans of these types of cards, especially from A&G. As a fan of historical trivia, I love them. They're a nice change of pace from the number of sets that are released during the summer.

I do hope A&G goes back to using actual historical figures on their cards in 2012. I don't need cards of Stan Lee or Jack LaLanne (although I happened to like the Wee Man card). I want to see more cards of Victor Hugo and Louis Pasteur.

I promise I'll get back to the actual baseball cards in my next post. I'm planning a cool new concept that I think a lot of my growing number of readers will like.

But for now, bask in the glory of hoaxes!