Some Nights are Almost Perfect

2010 10 06 Line Score Reds @ Phillies after 7 innings

This is the best Line Score photo I have from late in the game.


Game Ticket

Roy Halladay v Brandon Phillips

If you click on this one, you can see the line score down by the foul pole and Phillips batting stats to the right.


Phillies Celebrate

It is only one game but it was a great one.

I will see if I can find some other game shots and try and post them later in the week. Too hoarse to talk now.

Pull of the Month - September 2010

2009 Goodwin Champions Mini #112 Robin Roberts

This is from a Blaster Break featured just a week ago. I have been on a mini-kick this summer and anytime I get one of a Phils HoF player that goes straight to the head of the class. There were a lot of nice cards in that break - basically a mini a pack. I suppose most other folks would consider the Black Yogi Mini or the Chipper Relic the Hit of the blaster, but for me it was Mr Roberts.


Junk of the Month

2010 Topps T-206 #257 Ryan Howard

There is nothing wrong with this Ryan Howard card. In fact as a Phils fan I am always happy to pull a Howard card from any pack.

But I do have an issue with the card:



2010 Topps T-206 #257 Ryan Howard (b-side)

Can you tell what it is? Apparently Topps is to righteous to mention a certain non-Hall of Fame Player. I suppose the unnamed player is contracted to another company and Topps isn't even aloud to name him in their copy. If so for goodness sake come up with another fun fact, maybe something to do with Home Runs or being an MVP having won a World Series. I don't think it's that tough.

Past Pull and Junk of the Month entries

2010 August
2010 July
2010 June
2010 May
2010 April
2010 March

2010 February

2010 January

Card Show Report 2010 09 25 - Philly Show @ Valley Forge Convention Center

This edition of the Philly Show for me was a pretty good one. I had a totally free day, I was only marginally exhausted - I think for the rest of my life I will always be at least a little bit tired. I had a couple of want lists and actually knocked some things off them.

One of the highlights was the 1951 Topps Seminick in the previous post here are some others.


1959 Topps
1959 Topps #147 Cubs Clubbers

I was able to knock out four cards from my 1959 Topps Collection. I am down to my last 42 cards, and any time you can find four in one day at this stage of the game, you have accomplished something. This card which features Hall of Famer Ernie Banks went for the rather nice price of $2


Vintage Phils

1975 Topps Mini #267 Dick Ruthven
1959 Topps #352 Robin Roberts

I already had the Robin Roberts card, but I could not let him set in the $2 bin. I seem to pick up at least one or two 1975 minis at each Philly show. This time it was Dick Ruthven. Typically I only go 25 cents on these, but for Ruthven I went to 50 cents.


1952 Topps and a Vintage HOF

1952 Topps #75 Wes Westrum
1956 Topps #195 George Kell
1942 Topps #117 Sherman Lollar

If you want to start building a vintage collection on the cheap, you may want to look into some Wes Westrum cards. I seem to keep coming across him in budget bins. George Kell is a Hall of Famer that you may not know about - he was a 10 time all-star who played 3b with five different clubs including the Detroit Tigers and Philadelphia A's.

All three of these cards went for $2. There is some creasing and the Lollar card has some surface issues, but the price was right. Good Rules of thumb 1950s HOF player for $2 - thats a buy. 1952 Topps fro $2 also a Buy.


Retros


These Retro cards all came out of a Dime box. Pretty much anytime I see a Heritage insert in a Dime box, it goes in the Phungo Collection. Same thing goes for the 2006 Allen & Ginter's. The Tim Duncan is from the 2007+ Topps Hoop set that I have bee slowly building. 2007 BowHer Tex is also a set builder - almost over the 50/50 mark on that set. I just think the Beckham card looks cool. hmm how bout that good day for Chisox Cards I guess.

Phungo Challenge - Card Show Edition Results

And the Winner is:

1951 Topps Red Back #45 Andy Seminick

Chris of Vintage Sportscards guessed 1953 Topps and was the closest. Dan picked 1940 Play Ball, and I definitely looked at some of those - but they were all a little out of my price range. Night Owl went with 1956 Topps - I did pick up a bunch of those including a Hall of Famer.

This is my first Phillies 1951 Topps Card. Seminick is the only Phillies player in the Red back portion of the 1951 Set, which means that Team Phungo has completed the Red half of the 1951 Set!! WhooHoo.

This also means that I finally have picked up a Phils card from every Topps Issue. I had a couple of Braves from the 1951 Set, but had not picked up a Phils card till now.

This card was likely also my bargain of the day, as it went for 75 cents and then on top of that the dealer gave me a volume discount as I picked out several 53 and 54 Topps cards off the same table.

Later this week I will post some other highlights from the show. Until then check out the fine show review over at The Phillies Room.


Previous Phungo Challenge Winners

PatSeacher from In Search of Pat the Bat
Rod from Padrographs
NicoLax from NR-MT
BA Benny from BABenny Baseball Card Buffet
zMan40 from Autograph Cards
Community Gum from Community Gum
Chris S From Vintage Sportscards

George Blanda 1927-2010

CNNSI.com has reported that Hall of Fame QB/Kicker George Blanda has passed away at the age of 83.

Here is a link to the Phungo STS profile on Blanda from November of 2009.

Phungo Challenge - Card Show Edition

I will be off to the Philly Sports Cards Show shortly where I will be spending this beautiful Saturday.

Your challenge is to guess the earliest card Team Phungo will come home with. If you have been following along here for a while you should have a feel for what I collect and be able to make an educated guess. First one in with the correct answer wins the challenge - duplicate answers will be tossed to the bit bucket.

guessing ends when I get a card posted up here later 2nite - or maybe tomorrow depending how burnt out I am.

Previous Phungo Challenge Winners

PatSeacher from In Search of Pat the Bat

Rod from Padrographs
NicoLax from NR-MT
BA Benny from BABenny Baseball Card Buffet
zMan40 from Autograph Cards
Community Gum from Community Gum

2009 UD Goodwin Champions Bargain Blaster

On a recent trip to Target I found a bargain blaster of 2009 UD Goodwin Champions. The blaster was half price ($10.59 w/ tax). I hadn't opened many if any packs of Goodwin last year so I figured I'd give it a shot.

This blaster contains 12 packs of 4 cards each. The Base Set consists 150 cards followed by 40 short prints and then 20 super short prints - and then another set of mini-exclusive cards - I don't know you figure that one out. There are a number of parallels including a set of minis that fall about 1/pack.

The Goodwin set was probably developed to compete w/ Topps Allen & Ginter - and it shows. Lets take a look -

Phillies



Howard - Roberts - Lefty - Nice Selection there - 2 World Champions. 2 Hall of Famers. Good Lookin Cards. All of the Current Phils cards have the World Series Banner which is a nice touch. Some of the cards have a "special" team logo - note the Liberty Bell on the Robin Roberts mini.


HOFs & Minis
The Minis are Tex, CC, Junior, Phil Niekro, and Stinkin Jonathan Toews of the stupid Stanley Cup Champion Chicago Blackhawks.

The HOFs Gwynn, Ripken, Ozzie, Teddy Ballgame, and Paul Molitor.

The Niekro photo is a familiar shot that we have seen in UDs other retro product, Goudey - That image was already borrowed from Fleer I think. UD was already mailing it in a year ago.

Griffey is card #1, which is only fitting as he returned to Seattle - the team for which Griffey was on the original UD #1 card back in 1989. As it turned out Goodwin Champions was one of UDs last Baseball products.
One More Mini


A Nice Black Bordered Mini of Yogi Berra. I am assuming that the special back minis have the black borders. This is a pretty sharp looking card of an Iconic player.


Plebians
MJ, Bobby Orr, Peggy Fleming, Dave Scott

Like Allen & Ginter GWChamps contains other Notables who were not blessed with the abilities to play the great game of baseball.

Dave Scott is the original Triathlete or something like that - this card is a Short Print, the picture is different then all the rest of the cards. The cards all have a criss-cross pattern to their Backgrounds. For whatever reason the Scott card is all the painting - or photoshop of the painting anyway. Peggy Fleming looks really evil in this picture.

Base Cards

I decided to show off the base cards by constructing an All-Star team from the blaster.

Battery

McCann, Liriano, Lincecum, Thome

Two of these guys are already in the playoffs, and the other two could also get in. Notice that the McCann card is one of the ones carrying a special logo. I stuck Thome in with the Pitchers and Catchers because it was where I had space to put a DH.

Infield

Pedroia, Jeter, Bill Hall, Morneau

Ok Bill Hall is not an All-Star, but he is a short print so he got the nod as the Blaster 3rd baseman. Both Morneau and Pedroia have won MVP awards, Jeter has not.


Outfield


Manny, Josh Hamilton, Johnny Damon, Ichiro

The Manny Card is pretty cool looking - You can see the storm clouds coming in on the edge of ending his Sunny LA Days. The Ichiro card is also a winner. I am pretty sure that the Hamilton card is straight out of Goudey.

Etc
Card back of Steve Carlton - one issue with GWChamps is the font on the back. It is plain goofy looking. the lower case T's are particularly odd. I do like that UD did go to the trouble of creating a back for these cards. Every other UD product has identical backs - this reduces the personality of a set. The Phils logo here is from the 70s era Phils teams for which Carlton played.

I paired the B-Side here with a 20th anniversary card - if you pick up an UD blaster from 2009 you are bound to find a few of these. This card the Red Wings winning the 2007-08 Stanley Cup. The photo'd player is Henrik Zetterberg I think.

Mojo


Chipper Relic- mojo. Not sure what the M stands for my guess is Memorabilia or Mojo.

Overall I enjoyed the blaster. The half price is key. 4 card packs always seem weak to me. but opening 12 of them with a good mix of oddballs and minis added to the fun. Unfortunately the box was marred by the fact that maybe half of the cards had a dinged upper left corner. Regardless it was still fun to open.

I picked up 36 cards from the 150 card base set (24%). The 7 minis were all unique vs the base cards giving me 43 of 150 (27% of a whacky FrankenSet). So I could consider building a set relatively cheaply.

The 5 cards of 48 from the 12 packs of 4 are - 1&2) the 2 short prints, 3) the Chipper Relic, 4) the 20th aniv card, and 5) 1 card forfeited from the Chipper pack.

I doubt I will go to the trouble of building the set. I will more likely keep about half for various collecting projects - Phils collection, Hall of Famers, Player Collections (Thome n Damon), minis, My WBC collection (Ichiro), and My Plebes Collection.