Who's Autograph would You Stand in Line For?

1956 Topps #261 Bobby Shantz

As I mentioned earlier this week the Philadelphia SportsCard and Memorabilia Show is this weekend. In years past I have justified part of my admission by getting a complimentary autograph. Usually a lower tier player like Todd Pratt. This Saturday there will be no Free Autograph and I am curious who among the many signers you would consider standing in line for and handing over your hard earned cash.

Would you go the Cheap route and pick up an auto of Bobby Shantz (above) for $15?

Or go all out and get Cal Ripken ($132)

1992 Topps #40 Cal Ripken

1964 Topps #265 Jim Bunning

A more controversial choice may be Jim Bunning ($45)

The remaining signers are priced as follows:

Mickey Morandini $15 (Friday)
Von Hayes $15
Dickie Thon $15
Bob Feller $25 (Friday)
Jim Palmer $29

This is great - The crack staff at hat put together the web page over at Hunt Auctions describes Jim Palmer as 4 time Gold Glove Winner.

Not Hall of Famer, or 3 Time Cy Young Winner or even Six Time All-Star. Or how about this one Four Time World Champion! Nope Just Four Time Gold Glove Winner. They would go nuts if Jim Kaat was there.

For my time and money Shantz would be the way to go. I would also consider Palmer and Feller at those numbers. To me Bunning at $45 is insane money.

Speaking of insane the football prices on Sunday are all out of kilter Leonard Weaver $30 and DeSean Jackson $70??

Who would you pick, anyone, noone?

If you are planning on hitting the show, let me know. I am shooting for late morning and early afternoon on Saturday.

Swag from the Final Tribe Cards Giveaway!

I could post these for a couple of weeks, but I will try and keep this down to two or three posts:

David asked for some extra clubs that we may want and I picked the O's and Twins. He came through with a lot of each. Today I am going to feature the Phils:


2006 Fleer Decade Greats #DEC-SC Steve Carlton

This card will get its own post eventually - for now just wanted to post it and note that I enjoy the concept of producing a retro card dedicated to a decade of a players career. If this photo looks familiar, it is because you have seen the same picture on a 2008 UD Heroes card of Carlton.



2001 UD Hall of Fame National Pastime #68 Mike Schmidt

Ther other Hall of Famer from the Phils 1980 Championship Squad. This card looks a little better than the scan. The chrome sort of gets lost in the darker colors here.

And there were tons of other cards:

It took me most of the weekend to sort through the lot. I was impressed with how many of the cards filled some pretty specific needs in a variety of venues: Phils Topps Collection, Player Collections, Inserts, Bowman Draft Set, Phungo Games, and Singles from Sets that I had not seen.

Thanks for putting this together Dave, I am sure it was a truly Herculean effort and I am glad that you were good enough to put in the time to sort the cards and send out the great packages.

Philly Show this Weekend

The next edition of the Philadelphia SportsCard and Memorabilia Show is this weekend.

I am not sure if I will be attending, but am considering Saturday.

Hunt Auctions is continuing it's trend towards making the show more autograph oriented. There are 15 signers scheduled over 3 days. Baseball players Friday and Saturday and all Eagles on Sunday. There is no complimentry auto scheduled for Saturday, The comp on Sunday is Eagles Safety Macho Harris.

Hall of Famers Cal Ripken, Bob Feller, Jim Palmer, and Jim Bunning will all be part of the weekend.

Admission has also been raised a dollar to 8 bucks. There are usually $1 off coupons in the weekend editions of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The price increase and the lack of a free auto are pointing me towards skipping this show, but I am sure I will cave.

Swag from Bill and Ben

I Wanted to put together a quick post to acknowledge a couple of recent trades.

I am going to lead-off with some a massive contribution that Ben Henry of The Baseball Card Blog made to the Phungo 1959 Topps Set. Ben is going through some serious downsizing and focusing of his collection - I sent some vintage cards Ben's way including the the classic 1971 Topps #5 Thurman Munson card and he sent me back almost 40 cards for the aforementioned 1959 Set.


The 59s included a couple of Phillies, which are hard to find (at reasonable prices) locally and a rare High Number card of Lee Tate as well as 36 other cards that I needed.

This is likely the biggest contribution I have had to the Phungo 1959 Topps Project since I started back in late 2007. If you want to see my 1959 want list as it stands currently or are just so bored you want to check my progress click here. As it stands thanks to Ben I have moved into the final 100 cards of the set, and am well ahead of where I expected to be at this point in 2010 for the project.

Reader Bill

I also made a second trade of vintage cards and other with reader Bill F from Alexandria VA recently. I sent some Padres and a couple 1956 cards his way for a bunch of 1971 Phils and some newer "retro" Phils cards. Bill was also good enough to contribute to the 1959 cause with a Buyback of Claude Osteen.


Loved all these card. I hadn't botthered to pick up any cards from the new T206 or the Goodwin Champs sets. ok maybe I did get T206. Yeah that's right I did get a single pack I think, but it yielded no Phils.

The colors on the Dick Allen make for a pretty sharp looking card. This is a set I probably should of given more of a shot in 2009.

The Barry Lersch card is from the High Numbered Series of 1971 Topps - you can follow Phungo quest for the 1971 Topps Phillies Team Set here.

February 2010 Pull of the Month and Million Card Give Away Dilemma

The dilemma is what should I do with my pull of the month?


It is one of the best cards I could of asked for - It is a Philllies Card. It is aVintage Card. and it is on Phils 1963 Topps Want List - Check, Check, Check.

Unfortunately somebody posted that the shipping is $2.92 per card + 53 cents for each additional card.

As much as I love this card - $3 to Topps is over the limit for me. Mauch is considered a great tactical manager, but he never reached the World Series - He was the Phils skipper who helmed the team during their historic 1964 collapse.

And his cards are basically commons. A quick study found that a 63 Topps Mauch card did recently sell for over $6 shipped on ebay - it was in EX-MT condition though. There were also over 50 commons that sold for under $2 shipped. I consider Mauch a common and can't see the 3 bucks.

For those of you that keep track of such things - my pull of the month came from a Mantle Card:


Meh of the Month


I could of just randomly selected almost any card that I got in my two rack packs of 2010 UD. And honestly the lamest card was probably the one of Target Field featured in my previous post - although I have started to see some better looking stadium cards from this set recently.

Instead I decided on this triumvirate of rather unflattering photos. I know Carlos Lee is a big man, and ditto for Kung Fu Panda - never thought of Marlon Byrd that way. But I think all three of these photos make these guys look a little chunky.

For a look back at January's Phungo Pull of the Month click here.

Phungo's Two Cents - 2010 Upper Deck

I am going to dedicate way to much time to this post - I found little to like about my first sample of 2010 Upper Deck Cards.

Full disclosure - if your here and have read much of my card specific commentary, it is likely evident that I am at Topps guy. Topps cards simply have history on their side - these are the cards of my youth and I enjoy that sense of history. So anything I follow up with here is likely tainted somewhat my a personal bias.

Ok now that I got that out of the way....

I had a fear that ones Topps got the exclusive MLB license that they would mail in the 2010 set. I think it is far more accurate to say that Upper Deck was the brand that mailed it in. I found 2010 UD boring and uninspired. I don't going with the Green Motif - which I have dubbed Green Eggs and Spam. if you know your not going to be able to use logos, why not use the team colors or at least the crayola crayons 8 base colors. Perhaps this would have been a violation of the Topps Exclusivity agreement - I don't know.

It's a Hit - Camden Yards Card


I don't really like the stadium cards, and I will get to that later, but this one here is a dandy.

Foul - First Card


Thumbs down on my first UD card of 2010 just because he is a member of the team that beat Phils in the World Series. The card is ok, the opinion is purely personal.

Mixed - Phillies

I picked up 3 Phils cards which is better then the 1 card I got out of 5 topps packs. A couple of set up guys and Jayson Werth. All three were members of the 2008 World Championship Phillies squad. I really like the Romero photo and consider it one of the better ones in the pack.

Foul - Tape Measures


These cards from this post are all from a pair of rack packs ($10.58 including PA Sales Tax). The UD Racks seemed to always have a lame insert. These cards are ok, but why not have the city name of the players? I mean they went to the trouble of naming the pitcher and the hand he throws with. Magglio Hit hist dinger on the Road, pictured in a Home Jersey. Votto hit his at home, here he is featured in a roadie. That to me is laziness on UDs part - Insert cards are supposed to be special treat them as if they are. The other two are probably 3rd jersey's so I am not sure on those two.

Mixed - Biography
I actually don't mind these - The two I got were probably the 2 furthest apart magnitude wise. Buerhle's card commemorates a great event while the other card is a footnote for a team that had little to cheer about last year. My biggest issue is that I have seen a lot of folks that have praised this set, yet 2008 Topps Year In Review was universally panned - it's the same stinkin set.

Home Run - Catcher Cards

UD knew that catchers in gear would not have many logos in view and they took good advantage of the situation. There were several good action shots of catchers in the 2 rack packs I opened.

Foul - b-sides


As usual UD left a good bit of exciting white space on the back of their cards.

Foul - Hidden Ball Trick?

I just got done praising the Catcher cards above then UD does this to me. The profile photo is in the way of the action in both catcher cards above and obscures the ball in the Inge shot. This is similar to something that handicapped 08 Topps when all the players had to "duck" out from under the Topps Logo.

miscellaneous nits

I don't like the cropping on the Samardzija. That may be nit-picking though. The stadium cards are generally boring. The under construction Target Field may be top of the list. And finally in general I do not like the Two player Team Checklist cards. I have almost always liked them before with only one player. maybe these will grow on me, but right now they are a thumbs down.

2010 Phungo Cards - Sidney Crosby

2010 Phungo #09 Sidney Crosby

ugh.

I am mostly over yesterday's game. Hockey is Canada's game and Canada is the 2010 Winter Olympics Host Country - and for those reasons it was good to see the Canadian team win.

I think it is time that we stop looking at USA Hockey as perennial underdogs. The Canadian and American squads were the only teams to be entirely made up of NHL players. I don't know a lot about hockey but while other countries may have professional leagues, I am not sure that they quite measure up to the caliber of hockey played in the NHL.

Going forward I would think that in the 2014 Solchi Olympics that team USA should come in as one of the favorites in Hockey, along with Canada and the host country, Russia. The Russian Federation perhaps had the most disappointing showing in the 2010 Olympiad and I would .

As with the past year, we have included some non-baseball subjects in the 2010 Phungo Set. I believe this is the first Phungo Hockey Card. I took this photo prior to a Pens Flyers game last January. If you ever get to the chance to go to a Hockey game, definitely try and check out the pre-game skate. It is the Hockey equivalent to Baseball BP. In Philadelphia they let you go down to the rows just off the ice. Just try and stand behind the net and not flinch as the pucks fly against the glass.

I have given Crosby card number '09' to mark the Penguins 2009 NHL Stanley Cup Championship. His position is 'c' for center and I suppose Captain also.

Congratulations to Team Canada and looking forward to 2014. USA! USA!