Call for help - 1978 Wiffle discs

darkhorse9

Awhile back I posted on a board for some help. I got a little bit, but I'm hoping for some more.

I'm trying to confirm all 88 cards in the 1978 Wiffle ball set. These are the ones that were printed directly on the box, not the die cut ones inserted inside boxes (those are 1977)

To date I have only been able to confirm 80 cards. They were issued on various sizes of Wiffle balls. (junior, regulation., softball and bat/ball sleeves.

The ones I have been able to confirm are:

Bell
Bench
Blue
Blyleven
Bonds
Brett
Brock
Buckner
Burris
Burroughs
Campaneris
Candelaria
Cardenal
Carlton
Cash
Cedeno
Cey
Chambliss
Concepcion
Eckersley
Fidrych
Fingers
Fisk
Foster
Garland
Garr
Garvey
Gullett
Hisle
Hunter
Jackson
Joshua
Kingman
Koosman
LeFlore
Lezcano
Lopes
Luzinski
Lynn
Maddox
Matlack
Matthews
May
Mayberry
McBride
McGraw
McRae
Messersmith
Moffitt
Montefusco
Morgan
Munson
Nettles
North
Oliver
Orta
Palmer
Parker
Perez
Perry
Rice
Rodriquez
Rose
Rudi
Ryan
Sanguillen
Schmidt
Seaver
Simmons
Smith
Spencer
Stargell
Stennett
Tanana
Tenace
Tiant
Trillo
Watson
Wynegar
Zisk


There were eight players who were issued in the 1977 set that remain unconfirmed for the 1978 sets (Bonds, Carew, Hrabosky, Jones, Kranepool, Rogers, Staub and Yastrzemski) but I can't be sure these players are the "missing" players.

If anyone has information on any 1978 Wiffle discs not listed in this post please let me know.

WinPitcher

http://uncatalogedbaseballcards.blogspot.com/2010/02/1978-msa-wiffle-ball.html




Try the above in your browser, that's if you already have not been there.

milbroco

You have the following on your list but I thought I would let you know that I have a complete box with Fidrych, Campanaris and Lopes on the outside and with Kingman and Stennett on the inside. This is the junior size box. Good luck with your research.
Bob

darkhorse9

millbroco - So far that's the only junior size box I can confirm. Seems to me there should be at least one more out there, but I've never seen one.



WinPitcher - That link BTW is rather old and his list doesn't include several cards I have confirmed.

darkhorse9

The fact that eight cards remain uncatalogued is curious. The cards are available in either 5-count (boxes) or 2-count (sleeves). There's no combination of those that would account for eight cards. (except for four missing sleeves, which is possible but unlikely because those sleeves usually have one batter and one hitter per sleeve)

The boxes themselves confirm a complete set of 88. I wonder if that's wrong and only 80 exist.

ArmourPhil

PSA WiFFLE DISC Issue

Been working on my wiffle set recently and have discovered the following:

The std calalog of BB cards shows two years of production 1977 and 1978. The (80) 77 cards were "cut and inserted into the boxes" and the reported (88) '78 cards were printed on the inside and outside of the boxes (3 inside and 2 inside) .

We also know that some of these 78 cards were printed on a "sleeve" which was placed over wiffle bat and ball combinations.

I personally own 60 of the 78's and have seen pics of another 20. The eight that I have not seen are the exact same 8 that you have listed making me also question their existence.

The 77s come in (6) colors: There are (13) pale yellow, (13) darker yellow, (13) pale orange, (13) darker orange), (14) pale purple (pink) and (14 darker purple) Only (1) color for each player i.e all Schmidts are pale purple (pink)

The color combinations of the '78s are much more complex. The key is that NONE of them are the same color as the 77s. ONCE AGAIN EACH PLAYER IS ONLY AVAILABLE IN ONE COLOR

Box Colors include: pale yellow, yellow, pale red, red, orange, olive green, brown

Sleeve Colors include deep purple, deep red, navy blue, pale blue (none of hese colors are he same as the box colors or the 77 colors.

Confirmed Sleeve players include: Messesmith/Oliver, Chambliss/Perry, Ek/Buckner/ Reggie/McGraw, Fingers, Foster, Carlton/Smith, Ryan/Cey, Bench/Palmer, Morgan/McRae, Gullett/McBride

The missing 8 could be on 4 sleeves, as you suggest below, but it would be a hell of a coincidence that I have never seen the exact same (8) !

Now back to PSA who has completely F'ed up the grading on these.

The population report shows (0) 1976 wiffle ball disc cards while you can go on EBay and find any number of them labeled 1976 wiffle disc. I personally have Schmidt and Ryan labeled 1976 by PSA .

My guess is they started grading these years ago without looking at the Std Catalog and used the copyright on he discs (which are both 1976) to date these. Then when they realized they had screwed up they moved all of them on the pop report to 1978 without telling anyone. The '78 wiffle pop report shows 457 graded discs. The problem is that when I look at these on EBay ALL of them are the colors of the '77 precut discs, NOT the proper colors of the '78 discs. For instance, right now there are > 3 samples of > 15 of the players for sale, each of he 15 players only shows up in one color as they should and the color is of the '77 precut set, NOT the '78 printed on the carton colors. i.e all the Bretts are 1977 pale yellow NOT the proper 1978 olive green color and yet they are labeled 1978.

So PSA currently has > 500 wiffle discs graded and has labeled them 1976 and 1978 and most if not all of the 500 labels are absolutely wrong. > 90% of the wiffle discs I just checked on EBay are improperly labeled. SO much for the "worlds grading experts" This is really a mess.............................