The Phillies Room: Opening a 2015 Phungo HOT PACK from @phungo2008

I'm no stranger to the annual Phungo baseball card product and its world-renowned packs. For the seventh year in a row, an unexpected bubbleope showed up in our mail box yesterday and when I saw the return address, I immediately knew there was going to be great stuff inside. I was right.

I'll have to check the packs from prior years, but I certainly don't remember the packs being so jam packed as the 2015 edition. Maybe I received a special retail-only blaster special hot pack? In any event, and as has been the case in prior years, the pack was full of this year's Phungo cards and an assortment of "buyback" cards that were miraculous all needed for my (and Doug's!) collections.

2015 Phungo #1

2015 Phungo #42

2015 Phungo #53

2015 Phungo #26

I was happy to add the first card in this year's set, former Phillies ace Cole Hamels, to my collection. Sadly, Hamels' season is done courtesy of shoddy Rangers fielding and the Jose Bautista bat flip heard 'round the world. Ben Revere will advance to the ALCS along with the rest of the Blue Jays. Current Phillies closer Ken Giles was in the pack as was a nice card of Chase Utley, showing him in a non-take-out slide pose.

2015 Phungo #54

2015 Phungo #19

2015 Phungo #11

2015 Phungo #27

Some of my favorite cards this year feature former Phillies. I received my first ever card of infielder Don Hasenmayer, who appeared in 11 games for the 1945 and 1946 Phillies. Strangely enough, his Baseball Reference page indicates he wore #21 and #40 with the Phillies, but the team gave him a jersey with #23 on it for Alumni Day. I also received Jayson Werth's card, which features a cameo from Garry Maddox, and a Jim Fregosi In Memoriam card. I was able to scan the Mike Trout card before my oldest son Doug added it to his Mike Trout binder.

And then there were the "buybacks" not so randomly inserted into my pack. I received a few early 1970s Phillies cards needed for my team sets along with another Trout card (for Doug's collection) and a short-printed 2013 Topps Archives card of Anthony Rizzo (again, for Doug's collection). Minor league cards of obscure Phillies are always welcome, and I added cards of Jim Vatcher and Gene Schall to my collection. And that's just scratching the surface! Without a doubt, this was my favorite Phungo pack yet and I definitely consider myself fortunate to receive such awesomeness each year.