The (Second) Dime Box Frankenset Bracket: Our champion

#7 (Page 31) -- 1973 Topps #273 Chris Speier (27 votes)

def.

#6 (Page 6) -- 1999 Fleer SI Greats of the Game #52 Joe Rudi (21 votes)

Well, after darn near two years of page voting and bracketology, the Second Dime Box Frankenset draws to its inevitable conclusion...with our sliding friend Chris Speier looking down at us from the top of the mountain.

I'd be lying if I said this wasn't a bit of a surprise -- given Joe Rudi's demolition of most of the cards he faced in the tournament, I thought he was the favorite. But Speier took an early lead and never looked back, collecting 27 of the 48 total votes for the championship win. He'll be forever enshrined on the sidebar on the blog from here on out, taking his rightful place there under Billy Cowan, the first frankenset king. Let's give him a round of applause as he enters frankenset immortality, shall we?

Still, some questions remain -- first off, if this is the second Dime Box Frankenset, than what card could possibly be keeping Speier out of the first frankenset?

1958 Topps #273 Hal Smith

Oh.

For reasons I hope I don't need to explain, I fell in love with this card the minute I bought it at a card show a couple years ago. I loved it so much, apparently, that it knocked a future frankenset king out of the #273 slot. This takes nothing away from Mr. Speier -- you could definitely argue that his is the better card, and you might even be right. But alas, such tough choices are both the thrill and the agony of building a frankenset. (The '58 Smith is also the oldest card in either frankenset, I should add.)

Another obvious question: what next? No, I don't have any plans to build a third frankenset, sadly. I like the way the two-frankenset system works -- I think of it as a major- and minor-league deal in a lot of ways -- and I'm worried that a third would start to water down the quality a bit. Besides, I still haven't completed the second frankenset yet (I'm still seven or eight slots short, last I checked). Perhaps one day I'll wake up and decide to spawn the Third Dime Box Frankenset into life, but just not now.

Good news is that I do have another theme idea that involves binder pages and all you awesome readers voting on them. Bad news is that it probably won't be feasible for a while since it's gonna take quite a bit of cataloging on my part (no time like the present though!). In the meantime, I'll probably still have Tuesdays be a "theme day" on the blog, namely catching up with a few of my older themes  I've been neglecting.

Lastly, and most importantly, I'd like to extend a gigantic thank you to all the readers out there who voted on these pages and matchups from week to week over the life of this frankenset. It means so much to me that other people can appreciate these great, wild, and sometimes downright weird pieces of cardboard. And I can't tell you how much fun it's been sharing these goofy frankenset choices with you, and seeing how the polls shake out. It's been perhaps the most consistent joy of my life over the past couple years, and man am I gonna miss it.

And so, as much as I've been dreading saying this, I suppose it was inevitable: the Second Dime Box Frankenset polls are now closed.