Tuesday, November 12, 2013

1970-71 Action Cartridge Super-8 Baseball #5, "The Double Play" (Don Kessinger, Glenn Beckert)

While my type collection welcomes any #5, we move beyond "card" for today's profile, as its Super-8mm film cartridges and 3/4" boxes would never fit between album pages without help from a steamroller.



That back-of-box numbering (No. 10-11-05) means this is #5 in baseball's film series, just one sport under Action Cartridge's umbrella of cartridges for golf, basketball, football, and hockey (TCDB set checklist).


My eBay seller "inherited" this from library or school materials, based on the catalog sticker with its own (non-Dewey) numbering. Each cartridge includes a Coaching Guide booklet with tips about the skill shown in that film.


Super-8 films lack sound, so you need its guide to pick out details.

#11 Willie Davis in original package

You can still find some cartridges in shrink wrap, others with cardboard backing, and still more boxed with camera and several films.


The Action Cartridge camera evolved over time and one model featured a backlight powered by AA batteries. All used the hand-crank and viewing lens. Several feature this foot for watching from a table top or in-hand (as shown on the box).


Controlling film playback (forward, backward, slow-motion) with the hand crank felt pretty cool, I bet. The rarest model, issued with hockey films, uses a pistol-grip handle and image focusing wheel (the small black dial).



So far, YouTube lacks digitized versions of these films. Until some surface, enjoy this Super-8 home movie of the Cubs and Mets (Seaver's win on July 22, 1971), which includes Don Kessinger--IN ACTION!


Value: I bought my second-hand #5 cartridge on eBay for ~$20 in November 2019. Films with superstars like Pete Rose, Reggie Jackson, or Tom Seaver might cost $50+ in high-grade. Unnumbered player "cards" (trimmed box panels) would be easier to store in pages, but sell for significantly less than intact packages.

Fakes / reprints: It'd be tough to fake a product this intricate and seems too obscure to make reprinting box panels worthwhile.

3 comments:

gcrl said...

for a second there i thought i needed to track one down for my double play collection!

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daisycutter606 said...

I've just bought a 1975 corgie hand crank super8 camera with a few super8 cassettes ,Im a Beatles collector and I'm thinking of either opening up a cassette or making using a 3d printer and replacing the movie inside with Beatles footage :-)