Renewed call for help - 1978 wiffle ball

[steve B]

I found my ball/bat sleeves. And can confirm Carew/Yaz on the same sleeve.

I have two sleeves, Reggie Jackson/ Tug McGraw with maroon side panels on the discs and Carew/Yaz with white side panels.

I haven't found the boxes I have yet.

Steve B

[darkhorse9]

That's a huge help Steve (let me know if you're interested in selling that one)

With that confirmation I am now six cards shy of confirming the 88

(Bonds, Hrabosky, Jones, Kranepool, Rogers, and Staub)

[steve B]

Do you have the list broken down by source? It would be interesting to see if they were all available on each sort of package or if some only came one way.

I'm betting a few of the discs won't have been isued or that some are only on the bat/ball holder, since 5 doesn't go into 88 evenly

The Yaz/Carew may actually be from 1979. Pretty typical of the era some small stores and small distributors had inventory well after it had been discontinued, making it hard to tell. I think I bought the Yaz at a white hen pantry store. some time after I'd bought the Jackson/McGraw. It's torn, so it's also likely It came from one of the other kids in the neighborhood.

I recall some bat/ball combos with a corrugated holder, I think I have a partial one, but it's in the unsorted stuff maybe with the boxes.

That was a great couple years for disc locally. The White Hen had Chilly Willy and carried whiffleballs, and Papa Ginos was also in town. I managed to get advertising pieces for both of those full size sets.

Plus there were the RC cans.....
And Hostess.....

Steve B

[darkhorse9]

I didn't want to get to detailed and make a boring post, but the breakdown of the cards by package that I can confirm is:

Junior size (1):
Campaneris/Lopes/Fidrych/Kingman/Stennett


Regulation (8)
Garland/Tanana/Perez/Hisle/Rice
Moffitt/Maddox/Simmons/Mayberry/Rodriquez
Brock/Concepcion/Schmidt/Lynn/Parker
Blyleven/Zisk/May/Garr/Joshua
Bell/Stargell/Tenace/Luzinski/Sanguillen
Orta/Montefusco/Blue/Rose/Fisk
Seaver/Nettles/Matlack/Lezcano/Trillo
Munson/Garvey/Rudi/Cardenal/Spencer


Softball(3)
Bando/Burroughs/Watson/Hunter/Matthews
Tiant/Cedeno/Koosman/Wynegar/North
Brett/Cash/Burris/Candelaria/LeFlore


Bat/Ball Sleeve (11)
Palmer/Bench
Eckersley/Buckner
Oliver/Messersmith
Jackson/McGraw
Yastrzemski/Carew
Carlton/Smith
Chambliss/Perry
Fingers/Foster
Morgan/McRae
Gullett/McBride
Ryan/Cey

I personally own all but the last seven bat/ball sleeves. I have seen pictures of them to know they exist. That accounts for 82 cards. The boxes state that 88 players are in the set so I'm still looking for six more.

Each card appears only once in the set. When this set ever gets re cataloged they will clearly need to consider the scarcity of the issuing boxes, much like they do Post or Hostess. There are a TON more regulation cards out there than sleeves or junior balls.

(edited to account for one sleeve I missed)

[bsuttonosu]

Are the die cut cards and the box cards the same or is there a way to distinguish them other than the cut method? I'm a Brett player collector and have had one of these for years but never realized there were two versions. And I have the date listed (seemingly incorrectly) as 1976 on my checklist...probably from a Beckett list.

Thanks for the info on these...the checklist just keeps growing.

[darkhorse9]

The backs are different on the two versions. There's also a noticeable difference in the cardboard quality between the two.

Not having them in front of me I can't give a verbatim answer as to which back is which. The 1977 die cuts are all the same on the back, the box cards differ depending on where they were on the box (some cards faced to the inside of the box some to the outside)

[steve B]

Here's a couple pickups, Gullett/McBride sleeve and Reggie/Tug McGraw in blue shown with my maroon one.

Steve B

[Cliff Bowman]

Originally Posted by darkhorse9

That's a huge help Steve (let me know if you're interested in selling that one)

With that confirmation I am now six cards shy of confirming the 88

(Bonds, Hrabosky, Jones, Kranepool, Rogers, and Staub)

This thread is three and a half years old so I don't know if there have been any new discoveries of the six unconfirmed 1978 wiffle discs, but I found two of them, Ed Kranepool and Steve Rogers on a wiffle bat and ball holder. I think that it's pretty safe to say that the remaining four players, hitters Bobby Bonds and Rusty Staub and pitchers Al Hrabosky and Randy Jones, will eventually be found on two more of these wiffle bat and ball holders.

[darkhorse9]

Thanks for the new info. Going 3 1/2 years without new info shows how frustrating this set is.

If your interested in selling that sleeve let me know.

[toppcat]

Unrelated question - if the cards were MLB licensed, why are there no logos on the caps?

[steve B]

Licensing at the time was a lot less organized than it is now. The MLB license if I recall it right was only for the team names and the player likenesses in general, the team logos had to be licensed through the teams and the individual players had control over their own images.

Licensing then was also a lot less expensive and less controlled.

Steve B

[toppcat]

Originally Posted by steve B

Licensing at the time was a lot less organized than it is now. The MLB license if I recall it right was only for the team names and the player likenesses in general, the team logos had to be licensed through the teams and the individual players had control over their own images.

Licensing then was also a lot less expensive and less controlled.

Steve B

I have to disagree with part of this. MLB was licensing the team logos in 1978. From 1968-86 , all national licensing contracts were handled by MLBPC through the Licensing Corporation of America (LCA), a division of Warner Communications, Inc. During this period, Clubs licensed their own trademarks to companies authorized to sell in the Clubs' respective local markets and MLBPC handled the National contracts.

[GeorgeBailey2]

Originally Posted by toppcat

Unrelated question - if the cards were MLB licensed, why are there no logos on the caps?

The logo is the MLBPA logo, not the MLB logo.

[Gr8Beldini]

Originally Posted by Cliff Bowman

This thread is three and a half years old so I don't know if there have been any new discoveries of the six unconfirmed 1978 wiffle discs, but I found two of them, Ed Kranepool and Steve Rogers on a wiffle bat and ball holder. I think that it's pretty safe to say that the remaining four players, hitters Bobby Bonds and Rusty Staub and pitchers Al Hrabosky and Randy Jones, will eventually be found on two more of these wiffle bat and ball holders.

I own Palmer and Bench both cut off the same Wiffle Ball bat box (with the same factory folds as the ones pictured).