1975 Hostess Baseball #5, Joe Morgan

This Joe Morgan's a virtual repeat of my recent Twinkie article, since the company printed very similar 150-card sets on snack cake boxes and as inserts for plastic-wrapped Twinkie packages. This one lacks yellowy stains, though, a solid hint it was trimmed from a box panel. Sponge-cake liners readily soaked up cake oil, as seen in my 1975 Hostess Twinkie set profile.

Card front

Hostess used rounded-off player pictures in 1975, similar to View-Master's classic corners and TV sets like 1955 Bowman. They returned to full-photo versions in 1976, a much cleaner design that doesn't look like something you picked up from a corner Fotomat.

Card back

Card backs follow the typical Hostess style by summarizing a player's recent performance and totaling their career. Twinkie versions include black bars above and below the stat box--which this #5 doesn't have--so we know this one came from a snack box panel.

Hostess 3-player panel

Value: Low-grade cards, even HOFers, cost a dollar or two. Trimming cards by hand often left jagged edges, which many Hostess collectors just consider part of the territory.

Fakes / reprints: Haven't seen any in the marketplace.