baseball, "The Coin", treasures

[Kari Lepola]

All of this isn't exactly about Disney comics (although
I do get there at some point :) so you might want to
skip. 

Don asked about the baseball playing ghost and the print
quality of "The Coin".

I don't know about the cover, it wasn't used in Finland
(at least I didn't find it (what number was it?)). 
But baseball or rather pesapallo, which is a very similar
game, is played a lot in Finland. It was developed by
Lauri Pihkala in the beginning of 1920's. It's based
mainly on baseball and some old finnish ball-hitting
games. The biggest difference to normal baseball is that
the ball is pitched vertically instead of horizontally and the pitcher
stands next to the hitter. A special
association was founded in 1925 and they have been
playing for the finnish championship since 1922. 
The game is on a  professional level. Just recently the
was even a scandal conserning possible match fixing in
order to make money from betting with the official Finish
bookmaker Veikkaus.
We used to play it a lot when I was in school, every
spring and fall. The is even a different version for
small kids, called pitsku. In that everybody gets to hit
at least once before you start to count "burned players",
the field is smaller and the ball is softer etc. 

About "The Coin", I checked and, yes it is a bit pixelated, but so
little that you have to look really
 closely. In fact I hadn't noticed anything when I first
read it, eventhough I read it several times. It is really
great, I especially love the unique viewing angles.
The odd thing is that they used unsual coloring for the
story. U$'s and Gladstone's footwear is white, U$'s hat
black and white instead of black and blue, the money bin tan, Gyro's
little helper red, Beagle boy's hats while,
shirts orange, pants greenish.
At last they have succeeded and made the coins in the bin silver with
some copper ones also, but curiously paper
money is also silver???. (Maybe they get it finally right
next time :)

Third thing. Don seems to like sunken treasure ships.
How about a ship which was carrying all sorts of valuable
things bought for Catherine the Great (empress of  
Russia in the 1700's) by her agents in Europe?
Check: 
www.nba.fi/home.htm
www.nba.fi/MUSEUMS/MARITIME/Vrouweng.htm
www.vrouwmaria.com
Apparently there was quite a bit of traffic on the Baltic
sea during the 1700's from England, Scotland, Germany, France, and the
Netherlands etc. mainly because St.
Petersburg was beeing built and after that to get
everything necessary (European luxury items) for the
Russian aristocracy in St. Petersburg.
     
Kari.Lepola at hut.fi