Phungo Challenge - Film Buff Edition

First off, if you have been paying attention this week, I would like to let you know that the 1977 Hostess Twinkies Uncut Sheet will be Framed! - not sure when I will get to this, but it is officially on the To Do List.


Now back to the Phungo Challenge:


1975 Topps ### ?????? ?????

On Tuesday Night I went out to see a vintage Japanese Film. To be honest I am not sure what makes a film Vintage, but I will tell you that the movie is older than I.

Your mission is to figure out what film I saw. The above card is your hint.

Winners of previous Phungo Challenge offerings and Pop Quizzes so far in 2010 have been

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

What Would You Do With This? - 1977 Hostess Twinkies Uncut Sheet

You can click any image in this post to enlarge the photo.


1977 Hostess Twinkies Uncut Sheet

More and more of my friends have found out that I have been collecting baseball cards as a pretty serious hobby(or obsession) recently. As a result I have inherited some cards or other memorabilia from different folks.

A few weeks ago our friend Susan donated the above item to the Phungo Museum.

You may have seen some of these cards cut or on a 3 Card Panel. They were issued with Hostess Twinkies. This is a Full Sheet of 90 cards.

At the top of the Photo, I placed some Topps Gold Cards from the last few years for a size comparison. The Hostess Sheet cards would measure 2.5 x 3.5 if cut evenly. Each individual "card' has a smaller dotted line that could be used to cut a smaller card.

Also at the top of the sheet you can see the Color Marks that are probably used as part of the printing process to insure color processing quality.

The 90 players on the sheet represent 60% of the 150 card set.

There are some great names in the collection featuring several major stars and Hall of Famers from the 70s.

Here is a couple of the cards that sit next to Mike Schmidt.


Yep those are Hall of Famers Gary Carter, Jim Rice, and Dave Winfield in addition to the Mike Schmidt card.

The Steve Carlton card is also in a pretty nice neighborhood.

According to the Stardard Catalog of Baseball Cards the six cards above make up panels 38 and 39. Cards 112-115 (Richard's Row) and cards 116-118 (Hernandez/Nettles/Lefty)

The sheet is in good condition at best and I doubt that it would generate a lucrative offer if I were to sell it. I would guess $20, perhaps $40 to the right buyer.

However, there is one remarkable aspect to the sheet:


Pardon the display angle of the cards - for some reason some of my photos are rotating when I edit them and upload them to blogger.

At any rate for whatever reason there are two cards on the sheet that are swapped. The Rod Carew card above is Typically #9 in the 77 Hostess Set. while....


Reggie Jackson is usually #3.

The Standard Catalog mentions this and notes that the #3 Carew and #9 Jackson cards are Unissued Proofs. Which I imagine explains why this is an entire sheet - it was a proof.

The fact that we are dealing with a "rare"/short printed Reggie Jackson item here, may influence the value of the card sheet, but I doubt it would significantly.

Unless somebody out there absolutely has to have the sheet, I believe I will look into framing the cards. I haven't measured it, but given the size and number of cards. I would estimate the size at roughly 26x42 inches - including about 4-5 inches of clear spaces at the top of the sheet.

I think it would make a great conversation piece in the center of my man cave/card collection room when I have one.

What would you do - Frame it, Sell it, Cut it and sell the Reggie?

Sources and Links
Phungo Rod Carew HoF Index
Reggie Jackson HoF Index

Phungo 5 with Paul's Random Stuff

Today the Phils host the Mets in the rubber game of a 3 game set. To fill us in on the Mets and Mets cards, we are checking in with Paul's Random Stuff.

How do you feel about the Mets activities (or lack there of) at the trade deadline?

They made the right decision not to surrender prospects for short-term acquisitions. It may not have finished them off mathematically, but that 2-9 West Coast trip made it pretty clear that the 2010 Mets are not a playoff team. One or two players at the trade deadline really wouldn't have changed that. On the other hand, I'm a little disappointed that they didn't try to find out if they could have gotten a decent prospect for Pedro Feliciano.

Do you miss anything about the Mets playing at Shea Stadium?

CitiField is a wonderful new ballpark, but I do miss Shea. I loved the giant neon ballplayers on the outside of the stadium, and getting that first magical look at the field after walking through the maze of escalators and corridors to get to your seat. And since there were fewer distractions and more affordably-priced seats, it seemed to attract crowds that were more into the game.

What is the best 2 stadium Road Trip one can do for minor league stadiums in the mid-atlantic region?

I haven't actually visited both ballparks, but I'd suggest seeing the Lancaster Barnstormers and York Revolution. The Barnstormers have a beautiful ballpark, one of my favorites that I've visited. The distinguishing feature of the park is a merry-go-round out behind the left field seats. York is also supposed to have a nice field, complete with their take on Boston's Green Monster. If you get bored with baseball, you can check out Amish country and there's a neat-looking railroad museum in Strasburg that I'd like to check out sometime.

On your road trips you get a lot of cards signed, is there any particular set that is good for finding Atlantic League Players?

Any sets that have a high percentage of rookies seem to work well, if you wait a few years after they come out. The change in the rookie card rule after 2005 makes it a little tougher to find cards of Atlantic Leaguers now. Topps Total and the '52 Topps Rookies sets are my favorite choices.

2007 Topps Co-Signers #61 Paul Lo Duca

Favorite Baseball Player named "Paul"

I never really thought about this before... Paul LoDuca, I guess.

2008 Phungo #39 Brett Myers vs Paul Lo Duca (one of my favorite Phungo Cards)

Phungo 5 Box Score A strong 5 out of 5. Paul nailed the Shea Stadium question. These are precisely the same issues I have about the new stadium in Philadelphia. I do love the new ballpark, but I do miss some things about the Vet. No matter how few people were how few people were in the old building you were almost guaranteed to have someone in your section keeping score. Now you can go the whole season without witnessing a scorebook.

Paul Lo Duca was also a player on the Phungo watch list for a while - more as a Dodger than a Met. He was on several of my fantasy squads. I can't remember what it was, but I think his career ended somewhat sourly and that sort of hurt my opinion of him.

The York/Lancaster area is sort of in my old stomping grounds and I do intend to hit both of those ballparks someday - Team Phungo just has to make the time.

5 out of 5 for Paul's Random Stuff.

Looking Back
If you want to check out a previous Phungo 5, click here to check out our conversation with Project '62 click here.

For a Mets related P5 (including some interesting thoughts on the National) with Sports Locker Click here.

Phillies 2010 Alumni Weekend

1986 Topps #264 Darren Daulton

The Philadelphia Phillies 2010 Alumni Weekend is upon us. This year the Phils will be inducting Darren Daulton into their "Wall of Fame"

Daulton was the captain of the 93 Phils NLCS team and Won a World Series with the 97 Marlins. He was a 3 time All-Star with 137 Homers over a 14 year career. The 1993 season was his best as he hit 27 Homers and a league leading 109 RBIs.

Alumni Weekend will start this Friday August 6th and Run through August 8th. The Phils will be hosting the New York Mets for a 3 game series.

I have been to a couple of Alumni Nights and have had a good time. In the past couple of years there have been some painless autograph opportunities as well. Last year the signers were Jim Eisenreich, Mickey Morandini, and Mike Lieberthal.

For a look back at Phillies 2009 Alumni Weekend click here.

For the Collector

The card above is Daulton's first Topps Card. His Rookie Card is 1985 Fleer #U-33.

Phungo Poll Results - George Steinbrenner

2010 Topps #470 New York Yankees


A few weeks back I ran a poll to find out how different people found out about the death of Yankees Owner George Steinbrenner. The Results of the 15 votes cast were as follows:

5 - TV or Radio

3 - Word of Mouth

2 - E-mail

2 - Web Only Site

1 - On-Line Paper

1 - Sports Web Site

1 - Baseball Card Blog

I was a little surprised how many people found out about George Steinbrenner's death via the more traditional venues of TV or Radio. I had expected most readers of a Baseball Card Blog would be pretty -Net friendly and that the results of this small survey would skew in favor or the an on-line medium. However TV or Radio held their own.

On the other hand if you are enough of a baseball fan to read a baseball card blog you are probably also a sports junkie, which means the first thing you do each day would be turn on your tv and get the highlights. I think the timing of the news is noteworthy. The Steinbrenner news broke mid-morning on a week day on the east coast. This means anybody on the central-west time zones may have gotten the news while preparing for work, or driving to work.

Of course if we look inside the numbers one could say that the Internet related sources may have outranked TV and Radio since I combined those two mediums, but I did not combine several -Net sources. If you count e-Mail has an internet source then the -net beat traditional 7-5.

There are 3 comments regarding the news on the original Poll post. All three comments specified that they got their news via the web. The oddity to me here is that nobody felt it important to say I got it via TV or ESPN.

I actually got the news via e-mail, but the news came from a guy that sits next to me in my office. He sent an e-mail rather than tell me so he could attach a link. Is that word of mouth, email, or a website??

I would also like to note that I excluded newspaper and I hope a couple of people don't get upset with me for that. I figured that it happened so late in the new cycle for the date that it would not hit the paper first. However, I suppose it is possible that it could have been in print on the West Coast by press time.

Steve McNair

Last fourth of July I spent on a vacation at a friends lake house in Northern PA. We didn't watch TV or check the internet for several days. On the final day, we had breakfast at a diner and I picked up the Sunday Sports section - News of Steve McNair's death was on the front page. I knew it was a rare moment when I would get sports news of that magnitude from the paper.

I still thoroughly enjoy the paper and hope that they don't die out, but I understand the dilemma the daily papers face in our crazy techno youth obsessed world.

Pull of the Month - July 2010 - All Ginter Edition

2010 Allen & Ginter #73 Avery Jenkins

As I mentioned before, one of my other hobbies is Frisbee and Disc Sports. For more on this check out my Allen & Ginter blaster break back from earlier in the month.

Therefore any Frisbee Card is card of the month for me. I mean I am sure that there will be Inserts, Short Prints, Relics, Autos, and Serial Numbered Cards in my future. But any card celebrating the Frisbee and the Great God Wham-O is a true Rarity.

I must mention if anybody has any of the other variations on this card, lets talk trade!




2010 Allen & Ginter World's Wordsmiths mini # WGWS8 John Milton

I am thinking about putting together the World's Wordsmiths Subset. This is the one WWS that I got out of several sets of A&G. John Milton was responsible for penning the epic poem "Paradise Lost". Within the early part of the Poem Satan utters the phrase "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." This is the only thing I can remember from my HS English Lit class. The phrase became a bit of a mantra amongst my -mates during the years of my misspent youth.


Junk of the Month


2010 Allen & Ginter #54 Tony Hawk
2010 Allen & Ginter Monsters of the Mesozoic #MM10 Brachiosaurus

I actually like the Tony Hawk card. I lived in the town that Bam Margera (from Jack-Ass) hails from for about a decade. Regardless if you liked him or hated him, if you lived in that town during the Oughts you were going learn something about skateboarding.

Unfortunately this card came out of a retail pack bent. It was the top card of a pack from Target.

As I have stated before, I don't get putting big things on mini cards. The Dinosaur Cards perplex me. This one in particular bothers me because the Brachiosaurus has a waddle and looks like a chicken.

Past Pulls of the Month

2010 June
2010 May
2010 April
2010 March

2010 February

2010 January

2009 Phungo Cards - Grant Balfour

2009 Phungo #53 Grant Balfour

Balfour has always had one of the most unfortunate names in Baseball now he is also part of the worlds dumbest injury club.

I never want to wish injury on anyone, but this did give me the opportunity to post a Phungo card of Mr Balfour.

When I originally conceived of Phungo Cards, I wanted to give recognition to some of the lesser known players like middle relievers. That is how Balfour got a card. He also got a card because he happened to be pitching on a night I was in Baltimore - and when you at an O's game you can always get seats close to the field.