Swag from Night Owl Cards

Recently I received a nice package of cards from Night Owl Cards, Here are some of the Highlights:

1972 Topps #453 Barry Lersch
1970 Topps #324 Tony Taylor

NOC was able to knock a couple of cards off my vintage checker. I don't really have a current list posted but I do have a checklist that I do take to shows. Both of these early 70s cards are in great condition and are welcome additions to the collection.

Night Owl recently his best vintage discover of 2015 was the Bat Rack photos scattered throughout 1970 Topps. The Tony Taylor card is one of four cards that NOC featured in this post - you have to scroll down pretty far to get to the relevant text, but as always the remainder of the column is pretty interesting.

2011 Topps #219 Carlos Ruiz (Cognac Parallel)

There was a team bag full of cards which consisted of many recent Phillies, however so many players have been traded recently many of those players are no longer with the club. Among the players remaining on the current roster Chooch and Ryan Howard were the biggest names.

In 2011 Topps celebrated their Diamond Anniversary (60th) and had a couple of Diamond Parallels. The Cognacs are a variation on the Diamonds, they sort of look like they took a Diamond card and dipped it in Coca Cola. 

2010 Topps #MTOG Tales of the Game Roy Halladay

This card notes a series where the Phillies at Blue Jays series was moved to Philadelphia. Roy Halladay pitched game 1 of the series. I love cards that can be tied to specific games and we may take a longer look at this one in the future.

Chase

2009 UD O-Pee-Chee #OPC-10 Chase Utley

Yes I have a Chase Utley Player Collection. I have no formal "Have/Need" list for the collection - I am guessing it is less than a hundred cards.  This UD 1975 Topps knock off is a fine addition to the collection.

2015 Topps Stadium Club #99 Chase Utley


The more I see of 2015 Stadium Club the more I am impressed. Love this shot and glad to add it to the Phungo Collection.

Sources and Links
Night Owl Cards

Baseball-ref

Swag from Nachos Grande

Couple of highlights from a recent Nachos Grande Box Break

2015 Topps Heritage #596 Freddy Galvis

We lead off our Swag posting with a rare Freddy Galvis card. Topps seems to snub Galvis for some reason. He is not exactly a star and really more of a reserve player, but he is right at the top of the list of Phillies that don't get Topps cards.

This card is from the Heritage High  Number set, likewise #596 was a high number in the original 1966T  but it did not correspond to a Phillies player. The original card was as Rookie Card issued to Nate Colbert with Houston. I was unaware that Colbert debuted with the Astros until I saw the RC. He eventually moved to the Padres as an expansion draft pickup. Colbert shares his dual RC with Greg Sims who had a grand total of 7 career MLB Plate Appearances.

2014 Topps Stadium Club Chase Utley Base & Black Parallel 

He's gone and may have to sign a minor league contract to hook up with a team in 2016 but that won't stop us from being fans. Nice to pick up this short print in the break. 

2011 Topps Wilson Valdez 

There are not a lot of cares of Phan Phavorite Wilson Valdez. 

2013 Topps Chrome Purple Refractor Ryan Howard Purple 

Picked up a couple Purple Refractor shorties, The more notable of the two is the above Ryan Howard...

2013 Topps Chrome Purple Refractor Jonathan Pettibone

Pettibone had Shoulder surgery during the summer of 2014 and was expected to return to the Phillies by spring of this year but never made it to the mound in an official game. He is not currently on the 40 man roster.

2015 Topps Ken Giles

One of the few bright spots for the Phillies the last few seasons has been reliever Ken Giles. With contenders looking for closers and the rebuilding Phillies not reall needing one there is a chance that Giles will be on the move this winter. 

2015 Topps Heritage Odubel Herrera 

The Phillies rule 5 pickup Odubel Herrera also provided a few highlights during the Phillies 2015 campaign.

2015 Topps Chrome Ryan Howard

Still good to see cards of one of the 2008 Phillies last remaining heroes.

Bobby Abreu 
Darren Daulton
Ricky Otero

Some other heroes from the past were part of the break

2008 Topps Home Run Derby Chase Utley

Closing with another Chase Card.

Sources and Links
Baseball Card Database
Baseball-reference
Phillies - Todd Zolecki
Philly.com - Jake Caplan 

Topps Ignores All Named HUDSON and Swag from Thorzul Will Rule:

Was in a recent Multi-Sport Group Break run by Thorzul Will Rule.

2012 Topps Chrome #HP94 NL Pitching Leaders

This is a nice one for us Phillies fans as we begin the 2015 season with so much dread. The card serves as a reminder of the good old days way back in 2011 when the Phillies had a rotation so stacked that Cole Hamels was relegated to #3 starter behind Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee.

Topps packed this League Leaders card with SIX bobbing heads to match the design of the original 1963 Topps #7 NL Pitching Leaders Card. The trouble is that the NL had a 3 way tie for 6th plays in Wins in 2011. Zack Geinke, Daniel and Tim Hudson all had 16 Wins.

Topps decided to go with six heads rather than stopping at 5. Greinke got the floating head and the Hudson's got snubbed.

An oddity in all this is that the Original 1963 Topps League Leaders cards each had 5 players with the exception of ties: The aforementioned card #7 and Card #4 AL Home Runs leaders.  For Heritage Topps had to decide to either A) Echo the original six heads and snub two players or B) go with the default 5 head design and ignore the oddity of the original set.

I think the wrong decision was made. I would have gone with 5 rather than put myself in the position to pick and choose which player gets on the card.

Another observation is that on the original 1963 LL cards, the player in the center was the overall Leader. On this card Topps either elected to or accidentally place the pitchers in order from top left to bottom right. Ian Kennedy led the league in Ws, while our hero Roy Halladay finished 3rd.

Flip

2012 Topps Chrome #HP94 NL Pitching Leaders (b-side)

There's your proof of the double Hudson Snub. Both players sit there at 16 Wins with Zack Greinke on the back of the card. 


Hoop and HandEgg
This was a four sport break, I had the Vikings and Celtics in the break. I think my Hockey team may have been the Flyers, but it doesn't matter here as like the 2014-15 Flyers we came up emtpy on the ice. 

2002 Donruss Gridiron Kings #GK-8 Daunte Culpepper

I have seen a handful of Vikings games, I am pretty sure Culpepper is the QB I have seen most.

Bigtime violation on Donruss' part here as the Kings part of the Gridiron Kings flair overlays the artists' signature.I did some hunting around to identify the snubbed artist but was unsuccessful.

2008 Topps Baskeball #160 Chrome Kendrick Perkins (#d 61/288)

2008 Topps baseball was a disaster for a variety of reasons. The shame of it is that there is  a distinct design with the carnival letters however  there were at least two big missteps. 1) The photography for the set was abysmal and 2) The Topps logo being placed Top Center made for ridiculous cropping issues.

By the time the Basketball set was issued Topps had corrected the logo issue by moving it to the lower right. Additionally the Hoop Photography is an improvement over baseball.

Fleer Game Time Michael Bennett (#d 712/2001)

I have a minor college cards collection which this Michael Benntte card will fit into nicely. The design on this Fleer card looks like somebody tried to modernize 1956 Topps and failed miserably.

Sources and Links
Trading Card Database

Swag from Nachos Grande

Picked up a bunch o cards in the lastest Nachos Grande break. Posting some of the highlights here

2014 Topps Stadium Club Auto Mario Hollands

I was the big winner in the Topps Stadium Club portion of the break. Yes it is a rookie card auto, but considering some of the other possibilities of autos in 2014 TSC this is a disappointment for the group break.

With Antonio Bastardo out of the picture, I imagine Hollands is in the mix for LH bullpen guy.

2013 Panini Triple Play Cole Hamels, Carlos Ruiz

I wasn't a fan of 2012 TP, the images were a too vague for me. I think they is a significant upgrade in the artwork for 2013.

2012 Spotsclix Figurne Randy Wolf

This is a W - Randy Wolf is a bit of a Team Phungo Favorite. He has taken a spot on the Phungo Shelf of Fame.

Munnatawket Custom Cards - 2008 A&G mini tribute

These special bonus cards are an ABSOLUTE Highlight. To me the Munnatawket Customs look better than the cards produced by Topps in 2008 - How cool is it to get an Auto from the Nachos Grande Author. We  are less than 3 weeks into 2015 and this may be the best card I get all year!

Sources and Links

Nachos Grande

Cardboard Connection

2014 Topps Stadium Club Group Break Swag from Nachos Grande

Couple of cards from a recent Nachos Grande group break. Unfortunately, Topps came up a little short on coallation and there were some duplicate autographs/hits in the break. Regardless 2014TSC has some quality photography and some fun shots.

2014 Topps Stadium Club #167 Domonic Brown

One of the blogs I miss most is Dinged Corners. I bring this up here because they had a collection of players smiling cards. If they are still collecting the above Dom Brown card surely would be a candidate.

When I first saw this card I also noticed that Brown is being interviewed by CSNPhilly broadcaster Gregg Murphy. I asked Mr Murphy about this via Twitter (@GMurphCSN) He noted "My Best side for sure"
 
Flip It

2014 Topps Stadium Club #165 Cole Hamels (A&B sides)

As mentioned above the collation among the boxes in the break wasn't great. A product of this was getting two Cole Hamels cards, which makes it easy to display the front & back of 2014 TSC in a single photo.  

Nice Pix, kind of a Meh back. basically a 6 year old blurb, minimalist demographic info and stats. I would think TSC would be better suited for more SABRmetric stats than WHIP.

Parallels

2014 Topps Stadium Club Gold Parallel #170 Ryan Howard

According to Cardboard Connection gold foil parallels appear one per master box. The card is running at a BIN of $3 on ebay


Bonus Cards

2010 UD Pure Heat #PH-13 Ryan Howard

Nacho's Grande being the good Group Breaker that he is threw in some bonus box breaks and cards. This is a nice Ryan Howard Die Cut by 2010 UD.  This was an unlicensed product and we don't see the Phillies nickname on the front, however it is on the text of the cards b-side.

Pure Heat is a 15 card insert set of 2010 UD. Among the 15 cards are 2 Phillies - Howard and #PH-4 Cole Hamels.

1989 Donruss #549 Darren Daulton

The 1989 Darrren Daulton Donruss Card is noteworthy for featuring the Phils Catcher posing in a right-handed batting stance. Earliest this year The Phillies Collector Blog asked Daulton about the card/pix and got the scoop from the subject himself. Happy to get this card as a bonus in the Group Break.

Sources & Links
Cardboard Connection
ebay 
Baseball Cardpedia
Phillies Collector

Swag from Night Owl Cards - 2014 Topps #296 Domonic Brown

Team Phungo took a mini staycation during the early part of this week, unfortunately we had to return to the real world and all of it's concerns yesterday. The stress of the first workaday under the early AM of DST was mitigated a bit by fun card package from Greg over at Night Owl Cards that I received upon arriving home.

2014 Topps Red #296 Domonic Brown

Dom Brown is the Phillies only young star. Ok, "star" may be a bit generous. Browns first couple of season have been mixed. There was a couple of weeks early in 2013 when Dom hit the cover off the ball, Phils fans like myself are hopeful that this is a glimpse into who Domonic Brown will be in the future.

2014

Brown is having a lousy spring. He his hitting .107 through his first 28 ABs, before hitting a triple on Wednesday he was yet to collect and extra base hit. I am hoping for much bigger things from Domonic in the regular season. His 27 dingers in 2013 led the team, although the bulk of those came during the aforementioned 12 home run outburst in May. If Brown can come up with similar power and reach base a tad more that would make me happy. Dom can also be a bit comical in the field this shows up in his dWAR number which is a negative, Brown is young enough that hopefully he can turn this around as well.

 More Swag

2013 Topps Opening Day #M-2 Phillie Phanatic
2013 Allen & Ginter's mini #247 Ryan Howard

Another Phils player that the Phanatic has high hopes for is Ryan Howard, who we talked about last week in our Phillies 2014+ feature. Here we have a nice 2013 A&G mini of Mr Howard. For whatever reason there seems to be a lot of cards of Howard in the field, which is a bit of a mystery as he is often a liability with the glove.

2002 Donruss Originals #233 Rated Rookie Anderson Machado

Nice retro card from somebody other than Topps here. Machado never held on at the major league level. He has been kicking around the minors and according to Baseball-ref was last spotted in the Italian League.

1992 Sargento Mootown Snackers #16 Terry Mulholland

Definitely one for the Phungo type collection here. Never saw any cards from this issue. Also one of my player collections is dedicated Mulholland, at some point I will get organized enough to post some checkers for those palyers.

Even More Swag

A nice mix of Inseerts, Oddballs, Stars, and Rememember Me cards. Thanks to NOC for all the Phils cards and the nice variety.

Swag from the Phillies Room: Billy Hamilton the Hall of Famer

A few weeks back Jim from the Phillies Room let me know that he had an extra pack of Phillies Baseball Heroes Playing Cards. I told him that Team Phungo was definitely interested

2010 Phillies Baseball Heroes 7-Clubs Billy Hamilton

I had seen some of these around, but never the full set. I figured there would be some interesting selections and was happy to see that there is a suit pretty much dedicated to the Phillies early days. I would love my collection to have a card of every significant Phillies player - it would be great if it was possible to have cards from when the player was active. Unfortunately team Phungo is functioning on a budget and is plenty happy to have cads such as this one of the HoF Billy Hamilton. 

Bonus

1974 Kellogs 3D Wayne Twitchell
1974 Kellogs 3D Greg Luzinki

There were some bonus cards in the package including these two Kellog 3Ds, which are my first Phillies cards from this set.  I like how Kellogs goes to the trouble of noting Luzinski's specific outfield position. If Kellogs could do this 40 years ago, why can't Topps handle the detail today.

Thanks to the crew at the Phillies Room. Great Cards to help us Phillies fans to get through a long winter until baseball returns. 

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

Swag from Cards on Cards

Got home form a typical lousy Monday to have my mood quickly changed by a very nice card package from Kerry of Cards on Cards. Here are some of the highlights

2006 Bowman Heritage Pieces of Greatness #PG-RH Ryan Howard

The picture of Ryan Howard is a little odd as Topps is trying to capture the style of the classic 1949 Bowman here. Cool card with a nice striped Jersey snippet.

2013 Topps Heritage Chrome #HC98 Darin Ruf/Tyler Cloyd (refractor/purple)
2013 Topps #83 Darin Ruf Green Parallel

Couple of nice Darin Ruf parallels. Ruf is a bit of a fan favorite but the Phillies latest moves regarding several bench players seem to indicate that Darin isn't in their plans for 2014.

2012 Topps #243 Justin DeFratus (blue parallel)
2013 Topps #US71 Cody Asche

Two more Phillies RCs for the collection. Kerry must be busy out there getting new product, the Asche card is part of the Update Series - feels like it just came out.

ConC sent over two team bags of cards, here are some of the rest

Swag from Padrographs

A few weeks ago Rod from Padrographs posted that he was clearing out some player collections - one of which was John Kruk.  I jumped all over that and was able to add maybe a dozen or so new Krukkers to the collection. 

If I had my stuff together I could have picked up the Kruks while visiting Portland this past May, when I got to meet Rod in person. 

Regardless Rod was good enough to send me the card via the US Mail and he also added in some bonus Phils cards including a lot from the more recent issues.

2012 Topps '87 Mini Chase Utley
Minis officially jumped the shark for me with this insert set.  I always liked the 87 Topps woodgrain cards - but when I pulled my first in mini form, it just drew a yawn out of me.  The oxymoron of oversized-mini is part of the problem - minis in every product is another issue.  The Ginter sized Mini I am still hip to and I am sure I will be a little giddy next week or whenever I open my first pack of 2012 A&G. 
  

2011 Topps someting-Fractor Ben Francisco 
2012 Topps Hunter Pence 

The Phils let go of Ben Francisco and got him back in the person of John Mayberry Jr.  Pence and his high socks. 

2010 Upper Deck Utley/Howard

I was never fond of the final UD baseball effort.  The two player checkers always bothered me with both players looking out of frame.  Now that we are a little further more removed from 2010 the duo seem a bit more attractive - but I still feel like the overall card design of the set was mailed in. 
Thanks to Rod for the Cards and go check out Padrographs - lots of good fire sale postings going up periodically

Swag from Cardboard Junkie

A few weeks back I posted the best evah sketch card a Cardboard Junkie Original 1/1 of Brad Lidge.

Along with the sketch cards Dayf was also generous enough to toss in some cool Phillies cards. 

Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt Cards.  Note the card on the left is the 1984 O-Pee-Chee card not the Topps Card. 

2004 Topps  Ricky Ledee
2004 Topps Doug Glanville

Dayf was also able to knock out a lot of cards on my Topps Philles Collection.  There is something that I llike about 2004 Topps, yet I rarely see it mentioned.  Either everyone else hates the set or perhaps it falls into that middle ground of being to new to be interesting for being old and not recent enough to be relavant.

Bunches of other Phils Cards

and....

I GOT A PONY!!

More Original Dayf artwork! - Fillies Ponies Phillies get it?