2026 Topps Two-Pack Break

I picked up a pair of 36 card fat packs at my LCS on Topps Opening Day. I challenge anyone to get more Doubles than I received in these two packs. 

Pack Highlights 

Before I get to the low-lights of the dupes I want to show some of the cards I liked. First off are the commons.

2026 Topps Trevor Megill

The first card of 2026 was Brewers Closer Trevor Megill. I like this card because almost all of the pitcher cards are exactly the same. It is nice to get action shots but there is so little variety in those action shots. 

Battery 

2026 Topps Bryan Woo, Michael Wacha, Logan Webb & Sean Murphy

Fairly typical pitchers photos for recent sets. Sean Murphy is the only catcher in the two packs that was shown catching. There were at least two catchers pictured running.

Infield

2026 Topps CJ Abrams, Kristian Campbell, Ben Williamson& Vlad jr

A couple of goofy jerseys here. I think Campbell is the only FS. I do like the CJ Abrams bat flip out of frame.

Outfield 

2026 Topps Jhostoynxon Garcia, Aroldis Garcia, James Wood & Byron Buxton

Getting Password may be the highlight of non-Phils 

Speaking of Phillies, we have one of the newest Phils in Aroldis Garcia with a good celebration going.

Speaking of Phillies 

2026 Topps Jhoan Duran, Bryce Harper, Edmundo Sosa & FoilBoard Cool Crushers (Schwarber and Harper) 

I always appreciate the use of the Liberty Bell Logo.

Between the 4 cards three different home jerseys are represented. 

Kind of a Meh Harper card - unless you hate the electric blue city connect than I suppose it's worse than meh.

Team Cards

2026T team cards: Dodgers, Dodgers b-side, Blue Jays Royals

Next up Team Cards. 

one good thing about getting a boatload of dupes is you can feature a front & back in the same shot. 

but these are a bit weak.

How does the Dodgers Team Card not have  the words "World Series" on the b-side? 

And what's with the Team Leader stats not having THE STAT?

Inserts

2026 Topps Titans of the Game De La Cruz & Mike Trout

Stars Insert Devers & Roman Anthony

Each pack had a couple of what I assume are continuity inserts. 

2 different styles but basically similar. one has baseballs the other has stars. kind of lazy kids.

Retro Inserts

2026 Topps 91T Roman Anthony, Matt Shaw ASR, 91T Mickey Mantle

Closing the feature cards with the Retro Inserts and Rookie Cup Cards. 

1991 Topps is solid so this is a nice retro - I wonder how many other 1991 cards Mantle is on. 

Bit of RedSox hot pack, couple of Roman Anthony Inserts, the FS Khristian Campbell and Password. 

And The Dupes

Out of 72 card between the two packs I was cursed with 19 Duplicates! that is over 25% of the cards

19 duplicate cards in 2026 Topps

A lot of this is just bad luck. I chose two packs from different spots in the bin and probably should stick to picking back2back packs.  Still this is some pretty lousy collation. 

2026 Topps

Overall I think it is a mediocre year. Good enough to open a few packs but I doubt I will ever build the set. Getting all those dupes may have soured my already muted opinion on the set, regardless my collecting new cards is winding down and the odds of me building a new set in the future is fairly slim. 

1959 Topps Baseball Thrills #461 Mickey Mantle

Today we close out our year long look at the 1959 Topps Baseball Thrills Subset.

1959 Topps Baseball Thrills #461 Mickey Mantle

This may be our last column on the subset but it is the first card from the series and it is dedicated to one of the greatest players of the era or any era, Mickey Mantle.

While some of the 1959 BT subset cards honor events that date back several seasons, the Mantle reflects directly back to 1958. For the 3rd time in four years Mantle led the AL in Home Runs. The Card back goes into some detail on Mantles 1950s HR titles.

Mantle's 42nd Homer alluded to on the card was hit off of Tom Brewer, a Right-Handed Pitcher.

1959 Topps Baseball Thrills #461 Mickey Mantle (b-side)

In 1958 the Mick was challenged by Rocky Colavito who we profiled in an earlier BT column.  With a week remaining in the Season Mantle was leading the Home Run Race 41-38. Colavito hit knocked out three dingers in his final four games but it wasn't enough as Mantle had already hit #42 on September 24th

The 1959 Baseball Thrills Card represents a Home Run that Mantle hit off of Tom Brewer, a Right Handed Pitcher. According to baseball-ref, every AB Mantle took versus righties in 1958, was as a Left Handed Batter. Therefore the image depicted here cannot be the AB upon wihch Mantle hit Homer #42.

That as far as I took my research before once again checking with the 1959 Topps blog. CommishBob found that the photo the card pix was from the 1958 World Series.

1959 Topps Baseball Thrills
I hope you enjoyed our first Subset Series. We have another fun subset scheduedl for 2015, that series will commence soon.

Sources & Links
1959 Topps Baseball Thrills
1959 Topps one f/g card at a time
baseball-ref

Mantle Phungo Challenge Solved

This challenge didn't take long.  Our friends over at the Phillies Room knocked it out in 10 minutes. It took me a little longer.  On the card Mantle has a distinctive patch on his left shoulder that is shaped like a shield.

I eventually found this photo:

 1951 Photo DiMaggio and Mantle

I found this picture attached to an review of Jane Leavy's Mantle book, "The Last Boy" on Cleveland.com.

If you click on the picture it will enlarge and you can make out American League on the patch.  From their I googled stuff like "American League Patch" and found this:

And there you have it Golden Anniversary patch worn by all American League players in 1951.  And even More GOLD for 2012 Topps. 

 
Looking Back

February - Dawgbones
January - Cards That Never Were

2012 Topps Value Pack

Value Boxes are back for 2012.  I have limited my pickups for 2012 to a Hanger and Rack for Flagship and a Blaster and a Rack for Heritage. 

With that few cards in the collection, I figured adding a Value Box would not dupe up to many cards I had already picked up.  The Box went for $15.10 at a big box store - (14.99 +/- PA Sales Tax/Store Discount Card)     


Highlights

2012 Topps Heritage #296 Jim Thome

2012 Topps #259 Michael Stutes
2012 Topps #307 Vance Worley
2012 Topps #98 Dominic Brown

The Worley is a dupe.  I also got a dupe of the NL Pitching leaders in one of my Heritage packs.

2012 Topps Heritage #279 Matt Kemp
2012 Topps Heritage #108 Vladimir Guerrero

Both Michael Taylor RCs (#253, #407)

2012 Topps Inserts - Of course the Thome here is my favorite.  The Koufax is the bonus GG.  Golden Greats is probably my favorite of the 2012 inserts, so getting 2 of those is a bonus for me.   

2012 Topps Bonus Chrome #MBC1 Mickey Mantle

The Stats

Flagship
30 Base Cards including 3 Phils Base Cards
2 Golden Greats (Ripken, DiMaggio)
1 Golden Giveaway (Braun) 
1 Timeless Talents (Molitor-Braun)
1 Golden Moments (Ellsbury)
1 Gold Standard (Seaver)
1 Walk Off (Thome)
1 Gold Futures (Kimbrel)
1 87 Mini (Bourn) 
1 GoldRefractor thingy (Juan Nicasio - Rockies)  
Note - I don't believe packs are retailer specific, so there are no red or blue parallels.    

Heritage
16 Base (1.5 Phils - Thome, NL pitching leaders)
2 Floating Head Stickers (Starlin Castro, Nelson Cruz)  

Bonus
1 Golden Giveaway (Koufax)
Mickey Mantle Chrome teaser Card


For The Collector - Value Box??? 


Click here for yesterday's dollar cents analysis of what is in a Topps Value Box.

Sources and Links
Vladimir Guerrero HOF Index

2011 Topps Heritage NOT Hot Box

As usual, I am a little behind - everybody is checking out Gypsy Queen and I am busting Topps Heritage, but at least I am busting a box from the current year.

Backstory

I was initially on the fence about building 2011 Topps Heritage - A recent Posting by A Cardboard Problem speculated on the rumour that the Hot Boxes (containing green tint chrome cards) were packaged differently.  At the CSA show in Oaks PA a few weeks back I found one of these Potential Hot Boxes.  In the name of Trading Card Research I was compelled to break the box.

Unfortunately, The Box was not a Hot Box but remained a fun box to open and I am happy to be building 2011 Topps Heritage.  It is the first Topps Baseball Set I have elected to build since 2008 Heritage.  I am pretty sure that at some point I will look into 2009 Goodwin Champions, but right now that project is still in the thinking about stage.

Box Toppers

The Box had two toppers - A 50th anniversary of Don Clendennon and a David Price Baseball Fiver. 

Not sure how I feel about Topps QC on this one, The Clendennon card is in reasonable shape if I was picking it up at a show as a 50 cent common, but this card is in fair shape and horribly cut.

Don't get me wrong the Anniversary cards are my favorite box topper, I just think that at 1 in every other box Topps could do a little better on the buyback end.  I was also hoping for a baseball buck and Price is a nice one to get.

Base Set

Low Numbers 194/425 (45%)

Phillies 7/17 (41%) 0/2 Hi Number

Hi Numbers 8/75 (10%)

Babe Ruth 5/10

checklist 3/6

Hits

CCR-JJ - Josh Johnson Clubhouse Collection

#143b - Jackie Robinson Story SP

Chrome

C12 Batting Leaders (Refractor 212/562) 

C27 Omar Infante (1941/1962)

C35 Casey Blake (1690/1960)

I don't get including the leaders cards in Chrome.  It is only a 100/200 card set why bother with duping a couple of floating heads on a single card.
 

Baseball Flashbacks

BF-4 Robin Roberts - would of liked him more in a Phils Uni for this one. 

BF-5 Yaz

New Age Performers

NAP-2 Jim Thome

NAP-7 Joey Votto

I love Thome, but I don't think of him as a New Age Performer at this point in his career.  Votto might be my favorite non-Phil young player of the moment.

News Flashbacks

NF-4 JFK/Cuban Embargo

NF-9 Jamaican Indepence

gotta love any card that celebrate Ganga and Reggae Music

 

Then and Now

TN-5 Mantle & Prince (this is a dupe of a retail I already pulled)

TN-7 Killebrew & Bautista 

every year this is my least favorite insert in heritage - although they are the easiest to make fun of. for example I refer to the Mantle/Fielder card as a celebration of Drunk Vegetarians - which reminds me of every "art student" I knew in college.

 
Phungo Says

 
Yes I was disappointed this was not a Hot Box, but I am happy with my decision to build 2011 Heritage.  I remain a fan of heritage,  and have always enjoyed the 1962 Topps set.  For the most part the inserts are interesting and the 50 or so Heritage cards I already picked up had enough unique cards to get me over the half way point in the set.         

 

2010 Pull N Junk Playoffs: Best Pull - 4th Quarter

We are down to the final Quarterfinal for 2010.  I was on the road for most of the quarter and didn't open many new packs here are the contenders.   


October Pull of the Month

2010 Topps Chrome #192 Chris Heisey
Heisey is from back home area and Team Phungo has been keeping tabs on him.

Honorable Mention

2010 Topps Chrome Orange #7 Mickey Mantle
Parallel Mantle Cards cannot be dismissed - This card is ticketed for BA Benny as soon as I get my trade hat back on.   

November Pull of the Month

2008 Topps #533 Kyle McClellan
How the heck does a 2008 Topps Series 2 card get into the Pull of the year Playoffs?  First off you have to be building the 2008 Topps Set and down to your last couple of cards.  Secondly you have to travel half way around the world to visit your fiancee who is working abroad, and finally she has to be thoughtful enough to have purchased a few packs of cards for you before she left. 


All these things happened!!! and the pack she got me had one of the two cars I needed to finish the set.  Coco Crisp Your Next! 


There you have it.  Your 3 choices for the last quarter final of 2010 are:
A) Chris Heisey
B) Mickey Mantle
C) Kyle McClellan


Please Vote in the Comments.

There is still time to vote in the other Pull of the Year Quarter Finals: 

1st Quarter  2nd Quarter   
3rd Quarter

2010 Pull of the Year and Junk of the Year

We are coming up on the end of the Year and if you have been paying attention, I have been nominating different cards for Pull and Junk of the Month - please save the Pulling your Junk jokes for your own blog..

Well now it is time to Pick Pull of the Year and Junk of the Year.

And I would like to enlist the help of Phungo Readers in Picking Pull and Junk for 2010.  I plan on breaking this years picks down by quarters and having a playoff - March Madness style sort of.

But the first order of business is taking card of the last couple of months

October Pull of the Month

2010 Topps Chrome #192 Chris Heisey
Heisey is from back home area and Team Phungo has been keeping an tabs on him.



Honorable Mention

2010 Topps Chrome Orange #7 Mickey Mantle
Parallel Mantle Cards cannot be dismissed - I do dismiss those HR cards though.  .

October Junk of the Month

2010 Topps Chrome #40 Cliff Lee
Nothing against Lee and this is actually a fine card and photo, but well there is no real reason to commemorate his very exciting 13 games with the Mariners.  That and the one time I made a special trip to Baltimore to see Lee shut down the hapless Orioles he got lit up for four dingers.  

November Pull of the Month

2008 Topps #533 Kyle McClellan

More on this later - it should suffice to say there is a reason this isn't a scan but that I was very happy to pull this card.     

November Junk of the Month


  

2008 Topps #500 Chipper Jones 

This is another nothing against the player post - ok not much against Larry except how he always finds away to beat the Phils.   But this is just another example of Topps garbage Photography from 2008 Topps.  They really mailed the pictures in on this one - was this picture taken from the back of a section down the first base line or something. 

Well if you guessed I only opened one pack each of the last 2 months you would be correct.

Be back with Pull n Junk 2010 Playoffs in a little bit.


Past Pull n Junk of the Month entries
2010 September
2010 August
2010 July
2010 June
2010 May
2010 April
2010 March

2010 February

2010 January

Swag from Play at the Plate - 2010 Topps Chrome - Including an Orange HOF

Play at the Plate ran one of my favorite kinds of contests - A random Winner Contest! Those happen to be the kind I am best at - and guess who won!

The Prize in the PATP contest was a 2010 Topps Chrome Value Pack. Seen a lot of these around the blogs and it was fun to open my own pack.

I was hoping for a cool Rangers card to send back PATPs way but unfortunately came up empty - The 3 packs plus Orange Pack also lacked Phils but were fun to open. Here are the Highlights:


Refractor - Orange

Mickey Mantle
Delmon Young
Carlos Quentin

As with other Topps Products the Mantle is card #7 in 2010 Chrome. Jury is out on the Orange - cool idea having basically an extra parallel pack of cards in with a 3 pack retail product. Kind of weird - I think of Chrome as a parallel set to begin with and they just keep adding parallels to it.

Inserts

Refractor Erick Aybar - I think these used to be X-Fractor's but the card sez Refractor
Refractor - Purple Mike McCoy (#d 237/599)

I think the Purples are 1:12 so those come at about 3/box in retail. Aybar is one of those steady Middle Infielders that none of us folks on the East Coast no anything about. Mike McCoy is a career minor league player who finally broke into the majors in 2009 at the age of 28.

Highlights


Jake Peavy
Chris Heisey
Shin-Soo Choo
Cliff Lee

Chris Heisey is an intriguing player to me - I went to school with a group of brothers named Heisey that were all very good athletes. From his Bio have determined that Chris Heisey went to college very close to my hometown. Have not tracked down weather he is related or not, but I am following the talented prospect.

And of course after Monday Night's performance what Phillies post featuring cards from a Rangers fan would not be complete without mentioning Mr Cliff Lee.

Thanks to Brian over at PATP and hope this gets the Rangers some Mojo 2nite as they face the Yanks.

Phungo Game Report - 2010 07 07 Braves @ Phillies

The Phils dropped the final game of a 3 game series against the Braves on Weds night. Jamie Moyer held the Braves to one run through five innings, but couldn't get out of the 6th inning. The Braves sent 10 hitters to the plate in the 6th and scored 6 runs which would lead them to the 7-5 victory.

Brian McCann had a bases loaded double which broke open the 6th inning. Martin Prado added a pair of homers in his 3-5 evening. Ryan Howard and Shane Victorino each homered for the good guys while Jimmy Rollins collected a pair of doubles.

Kris Medlen earned the victory for the Braves, while former Phil Billy Wagner (hitting "only" 96mph these days) picked up the save. During the big 6th inning I found out that Medlen is a switch-hitter, and performed the rare feat of striking out from both sides of the plate in a single inning - good thing or else the Phils might still be trying to get the Braves out.


Photos and Observations
2010 07 07 Jamie Moyer v Chipper Jones (click to enlarge)

This is a picture of Jamie pitching to Chipper in the first inning, if you enlarge the picture you can see the baseball right below the right hand side of the first base coaching box. Moyer would win this AB as Chipper popped out to center.

It was a hot somewhat humid night - fortunately there was a bit of haze which actually kept the sun from beating down on us in the early innings. Braves fans were fairly well represented, including a confused young lady in front of us who wore a Braves cap and a Jayson Werth T-Shirt.

One thing that you really get a sense for when your actually at the game as opposed to watching on TV, is the size of some of these guys. The Braves have a couple of guys that are just huge. Tommy Hanson and Troy Glaus were among the giants. Perhaps it was just that I spotted them standing next to Matt Diaz.

Cards that Never Were
Wilson Valdez was still a Met in 2009, but he gets the 2009 Topps treatment as a Phil in the above starting line up card.

Cards that will likely never be in my PC

1952 Topps Mickey Mantle and Willie McCovey Autograph

Excuse the layout here - I am not going to put in the time to figure out why I can't orient this photo correctly.

Hunt Auctions is based in Exton PA about an Hour west of Philadelphia. They have a case of items for sale at the ballpark - it may be in conjunction with their memorabilia auction at the All-Star fan fest this week. This is a 52 Mickey Mantle in basically horrible condition, if I am not mistaken the salesman quoted a price of $35,000 for the card. The McCovey Autograph mext door was listed for $20 - a comparative bargain.

Good Guy Awards
Tim Hudson gets a GGA for signing roughly two dozen autographs. Other Braves spotted signing balls and caps included Matt Diaz and Bullpen Coach Eddie Perez. I also saw Ryan Howard signing for a few kids on the Phils sideline.

Despite the Phils losing an important mid-season game and series and the hot humid conditions, it was still a fun night at the ballpark. We are half way through the season, hopefully Team Phungo will catch some Wins soon.

Faux Blaster - 2009 Topps Heritage

I have been on vacation for the past week and have taken a much needed break from all Net related activities. Thanks for your patience while I sort through some stuff and figure out what I was working on pre-vaca. Today I will open by posting a Faux Blaster. Basically my Faux blasters consist of $20 worth of Hobby Packs of a particular product.

This entry will focus on 2009 Topps Heritage. For my $20 I was able to pick up 6 packs of Heritage Hobby at a recent card show (ok it was a couple of months back - but who's counting).

Here are some of the highlights:


2009 Topps Heritage # BF1 Mickey Mantle Flashback (643 Foot Homer @ Tiger Stadium)
2009 Topps Heritage # 218 Ozzie Guillen
2009 Topps Heritage # 73 David Price Rookie Star
2009 Topps Heritage # 387 2008 World Series Game #3 (Carlos Ruiz)


2009 Topps Heritage # 319 Mike Aviles Topps All-Star Rookie
2009 Topps Heritage # 449 Nick Swisher (SP)
2009 Topps Heritage # 163 Johnny Damon
2009 Topps Heritage # 397 Chicago Cubs / Checklist

I am particularly fond of the Carlos Ruiz card of course and also the Johnny Damon base card. and here is why:
2009 Topps Heritage #163 Johnny Damon (B-side)
2008 Seattle Mariners @ New York Yankees game ticket 2008-05-03
(click to enlarge)

Check out the first season highlight on Damon's card. It occurred at the final Major League game I attended at Yankee Stadium last year. Pretty cool and I get to add it to my Phungo Games collection.

Overall the faux blaster was okay, I came out with a couple of stars but was a little short on inserts and was not lucky enough to pull any big hits - The Swisher card was my sole short print. I did get the vendor to throw in a 70 card grab bag box that contained some good stuff including a few Phillies and a couple of 08 Topps Finest.

And I also cheated just a bit on my Faux Blaster by picking up this buyback card that I spotted.

1960 Topps #47 Don Zimmer (2009 Topps Heritage Buy Back)

The Zimmer card went for $3 and was in a sheet of other buybacks of lesser known players. The card is in pretty good shape and for $3 I consider it a steal. Don Zimmer is not a Hall of Famer but surely doesn't deserve to be slumming with a bunch of commons.

So there you have it for $23.10 (includes a single of Ronny Paulino as a Phil out of a dime box also) I have picked 50 2009 Topps Heritage cards. The only Phil I recieved other than the Paulino was the WS Highlight of Ruiz. Including tax, a 2009 topps Heritage retail Blaster would typically run $21.59. For hobby I consider these 6 packs a little disappointing simply for being short on Phillies and running below expected on the insert ratios, but finding the Zimmer card makes up for any issues with the rest of the content.

I will be catching up on things the next week or so (and maybe sneaking out to a card show today) but should be back with a Phungo 5 sometime next week.

The House that Ruth Built

On Sunday September 21 2008, The New York Yankees host the Baltimore Orioles in the final game at Yankee Stadium.

The Yankee’s are a team which has a legacy so great that Topps and Upper Deck have dedicated entire series’ to single players:

And there is a series dedicated to the stadium itself:

Yankee Stadium is the place that the Yankees called home while winning 26 World Championships. A wing of Hall of Famers have played in Yankee Stadium: Ruth, Mantle, DiMaggio, Whitey Ford, Reggie. This Legend played the home half of 2131 consecutive games there:

The more recent versions of the Bronx Bombers have consisted of all-stars at nearly every position. Some are from the system some from trades some were free agents. Jeter, Posoda, Rivera, Clemens, Bernie, O’ Neill, Tino, Pettite, and of Course A-Rod.

This guy even left the enemy and SHAVED to play in Yankee Stadium.

Over the next couple of days I will be putting together a series of entries about the Yankees and Yankee Stadium. I hope you enjoy the posts.