Sunday, September 23, 2018

Fun Foods Buttons, Surf Books, and a couple more things I picked up at my mom's house

My son and I visited my mom today, and I took the opportunity to search through my old room for any remaining baseball card items.  I have removed essentially all of my collection, but there are a few odds and ends left there.
Bob Horner, Charlie Hough, and Dale Murphy.
I had to really look for them, but I am glad to have found my old Fun Foods Buttons.  I only have three of the them -- I must have only opened one pack.  These are from 1984, but I am sure I bought them at a show, let's say circa 1990.  I wish I had bought more than one pack, since as far as I can tell, you can't find them unopened anymore.  I'd love to have a few unopened packs of these.  I haven't yet reclaimed my old wrapper collection from mom's house, but I will do that at some point.  I'd love it if the Fun Foods Buttons wrapper is in there, but it's hard to say if it actually is.
Button backs.
I have bought a few more Fun Foods Buttons from COMC, and I'll receive them around the end of the year, when I get my Black Friday haul.  For now, Dale Murphy, Bob Horner, and Charlie Hough constitute my Fun Foods collection.  (Like most people, I think, I know nothing about these buttons, but there's a good post from earlier this year at Wax Pack Hero about them.)
1987 Topps Surf Pirates book.
1988 Topps Surf Phillies book.
Remember these Topps Surf books?  They attempted to show all the Topps cards of that team, up until that point in time.  I think they gave these away at games.  I didn't make it to Three Rivers until 1993, my first year in college, so I'm sure I bought this Pirates book secondhand.  The Phillies book, though, I may well have gotten at the Vet.  The Pirates book shows Topps cards of the Pirates from 1952 through 1986, and the Phillies book shows cards from 1952 through 1987.
A page from the Pirates book.
A page from the Phillies book.
The books aren't very complete, I would say.  They only feature cards that are really all of the Phillies or Pirates; for example, the Mike Schmidt rookie card, which also has Ron Cey and John Hilton on it (who are not Phillies), isn't there.  Similarly with league leader cards.  But it's still a nice effort.  Surf laundry detergent appears to still exist, but it's not the brand we use, and I can't swear that it's even in our local stores.
Classic Baseball Cards, a book of reprints.
A page from the book.
I picked up another couple of books, too.  This one, Classic Baseball Cards, is a Dover reprint book.  It features several pages of copies of old tobacco and gum cards, perforated along the edges.  I didn't take any of them apart, so the book is all intact.  A friend and trading partner from my childhood had a bunch of cards like this, and I appear to still have one I got from him back in the day; it's a Dover reprint of Leo Durocher, which I posted with my other Durocher cards a while ago.  I'm fond of Dover because in my career as a math professor, I own many, many other books by Dover, which are all, like this, new editions of old things.
Most Valuable Baseball Cards.
Finally, I had another old book at Mom's which I brought home with me.  Most Valuable Baseball Cards, it's called.  The price tag indicates that I bought it at the University of Delaware bookstore.  Since I'm from the town that U of D is in, I did sometimes hang out at the university library, and I guess I went to the bookstore every now and then.  As the title and cover indicate, this book features pictures of valuable baseball cards, with some short descriptions of the cards and why they might be valuable.

That's everything from my youth that I picked up at my mom's house today.  So, thanks again for reading! 

2 comments:

  1. Love the Surf books! Wish I had one for every team.

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  2. I got a cigar box full of the Fun Food Buttons for very little. Still have a ton for trade. I need a Keith Hernandez.
    Email me at qaplagca@yahoo.com

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