Phungo: Kevin Frandsen

Sunday, January 12, 2014

Swag from Arpsmith's Sportscard Obsession

This past week Team Phungo received a nice package of cards from San Francisco Giants Fan Arpsmith's Sportscard Obsession.

2013 Panini Hometown Heroes #158 Roy Halladay

Arpsmith came through with a nice bounty of Phillies related cards with a nice variety from recent sets. Interesting retro design for 2013 Hometown Heroes. Note that the Panini name is not on the front of the card at all. Sadly this year forward any Roy Halladay card will basically be a retro card or at least post-career.

2012 Panini Cooperstown #59 Richie Ashburn

Late in 2012 Panini released a 170 card set of Hall of Fame players, broadcaster and execs called Panini Cooperstown. I believe the above Richie Ashburn card is from the Crystal Collection Parallel insert set - Serialed to 299, and seeded one in every 8 packs. The cards scan a little dark, it is a bit garish seeing the refractor treatment on a retro set cards of a 1950s era player.

2013 Topps #US58 Kevin Frandsen

Gold Parallel fron this past years update set. The Phillies re-upped Kevin Frandsen to be a utility guy for 2014. He has been a decent back up and should be able to help out on a team that appears to be going forward with second year player Cody Asche at 3B this coming season.

More Swag from Arpsmith

As I noted above, a great variety of cards, including recent parallels and inserts. A couple of notable Vintage cards in there as well, including one of a Hall of Famer that we will feature in a future post.

Sources

Arpsmith's Sportscard Obsession

BaseballCardpedia

Sunday, November 10, 2013

2013 Topps Hanger Pack Match Race - Target Red v Vanilla

Earlier this week we took a look at a regular Hanger pack of 2013 Topps Update. Today we are looking at the Target Red version.

2013 Topps Update #US58 Kevin Fandsen

Kevin Frandsen is the lone Phillies player in the pack. Countwise thats a push between the two packs, but Kevin Frandsen was a higher contributor as a bench player than Mike Adams was as a dinged up reliever. ADVANTAGE: Target.

The Vanilla

Andrew McCutchen and the Pirates were in the playoffs, nice to see him get some national recognition. This years Postseason Hero David Ortiz on a checker card. Got a bunch of Rookie Cards in this pack including Anthony Rendon and Jose Fernandez.

Among the Vanilla cards in the regular Hanger Pack was a Mariano Rivera SP - ADVANTAGE: Vanilla

Inserts

Target came up with a pair of Hall of Famers in Koufax and Reggie plus the 71 Topps Mariano Rivera mini. The Vanilla pack had Jim Palmer. ADVANTAGE: Target

Between the two packs I had a bunch of Twins inserts. This pack was Dodgers heavy - so this Hanger Pack Match race turned out to be a celebration of the 1965 World Series.

The Red

I like the Red Cards, Henry Urrutia is another quality RC. Unless your set building the colored parallels are always a bonus to me ADVANTAGE: Target.

Hey Wait that is only 4 Red Parallels

Shelby Miller RC was also amongst the Red Cards. The Target pack also contained a couple noteworthy Rookie Debut Cards Jurickson Profar and Hyun-Jin Ryu.

Rookie Card Bonanza - ADVANTAGE: Target

Analysis
It is so easy when you break it down by the numbers Target wins 4-1. Although one could easily argue the magnitude of the Mariano SP offsets anything that was in the Target pack.

The five Red Cards turned out to be the only real difference in the packs.

Check My Math - the two packs by the numbers: