Mets Card of the Week: 1964 Duke Snider

I picked up this 1964 Challenge the Yankees Duke Snider card last week. He is the only New York Met in the 50-card set. The cards were part of the boxed dice game issued by the Hassenfeld Brothers out of Pawtucket, Rhode Island. They marketed and distributed the game in 1964 and again in 1965 with a slightly different group of players (including no Snider and no other Met).

The idea was that a collection of All-Stars from both the American and National Leagues could be assembled to beat the the New York Yankee starters. Some other well-known All-Stars include Ron Santo, Carl Yastrzemski, Willie McCovey, and Al Kaline. Some of the Yankees included in the set are Mickey Mantle, Joe Pepitone, Jim Bouton, Whitey Ford, and Roger Maris. Some lesser known players included in the set are Art Mahaffey (Phillies), Pete Ward (White Sox), and Carl Warwick (St. Louis).

Snider’s card yields the following possibilities:

2 – triple
3 – home run
4 – fly ball
5 – ground ball
6 – strike out
7 – single
8 – fly ball
9 – base on balls
10 – ground ball
11 – double
12 – foul ball

This means that the Duke could hit .400 for you if the numbers on the dice rolled out at an even distribution rate: eleven combinations minus the “foul ball” re-roll. Snider hit fourteen home runs as a member of the New York Mets including his 400th career home run. Maybe he could get the game deciding homer in the series-clinching game for the All-Stars and send the Yankees down in defeat.

Today, if you can find it, the complete 1964 boxed set including all 50 cards would cost around $1,000.00 and the cards alone in near mint condition would run about $700.00.