July 31st, 2009 |
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ABCs of Vintage Football Cards
The 1955 Topps All-American set, 100 cards picturing college All-Americans through 1955, is probably the most popular vintage football card set. The key to its popularity is its player selection: it includes sixteen hall-of-famers, including five rookie cards; eleven Heisman trophy winners, including five rookie cards; Notre Dame legends Knute Rockne and the Four Horsemen; and even a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Byron “Whizzer” White. It is also an attractive set, with a color picture of the player in the foreground and a black-and-white action picture in the background. The PSA Set Registry provides evidence of its popularity: at the time of this writing, collectors had registered 85 sets of All-Americans, far more than any other vintage set.
Prior to 1955, Topps had printed two other sets of cards of college players, 1950 Felt Backs and 1951 Magic cards, but those sets were limited to current players of the time, and they are not as attractive as the 1955 set. The 1950 Felt Backs are downright homely, but the set does include the rookie cards of Joe Paterno, Darrell Royal, and a couple of pro football hall-of-famers. The 1951 Topps Magic cards are more attractive, but the set holds only one significant rookie card: Heisman winner Vic Janowicz. In 1955, Topps played catch-up, including stars from decades earlier who had never appeared on cards before. The result: lots of rookie cards of famous players.
The 1955 All-American set began a run of annual Topps football sets that continues to this day. Topps dominated the football card market until 1989, when Score and ProSet introduced superior products. From 1968 to 1988, Topps had practically no competition in the market, and it showed: most of the cards they printed in the 1970′s and 1980′s were dull and nondescript compared to their early offerings.
A 1955 Topps All-American page on the Boston College web site–apparently a student project–provides other interesting facts about the set: detailed descriptions of the cards, errors, and players who went on to fame outside of football.
July 29th, 2009 |
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error cards, Football Card Oddities, Inserts
An article in the Topps Archives blog has a nice description of the 1969 Topps 4-in-1 stamps and albums. (Scroll to the bottom of the article.) I was looking through some 4-in-1′s today, and I noticed a few odd things worth mentioning:
First, though there is an mini-album for each team, most of the albums have players from other teams pictured on their covers. The 49ers album pictured here shows number 80 from the Giants scoring a touchdown, and there are no 49ers to be seen, just the referee with his hands in the air. Surely they could have found an action photo of a 49er?
Second, the Topps Archives article mentions that several players appear in the 4-in-1′s (and thus in the mini-albums), but they do not appear in the main 1969 Topps set. But it’s odder than that: five of the players in the 4-in-1′s don’t appear on a card of their own in any major set! The five who appear only on these bitty stamps are Reg Carolan, Solomon Brannan, Carl Cunningham, Dennis Randall, and Jim LeMoine.
Third, as the article mentions, 65 cards were needed to yield 260 stamps, 10 for each team, but there are 66 cards in the 4-in-1 set. One card–Johnson, Katcavage, Triplett, and Lewis–is repeated, with the labels for the player names colored differently. When I think about it, the double print makes sense, since there are 264 cards on a typical uncut sheet, and 66 is a quarter of 264. I’m guessing that each of the 66 cards appeared four times on the sheet.
Finally–and this is just an error–the stamp of Bob Brown says it’s Bob Brown of the Rams, but it’s really Bob Brown of the Packers. To see this error and a lot more like it, check out my Mistaken Identities page.
I also find it a bit odd that PSA will grade individual stamps in this set. (There are usually a few on eBay.) I don’t know why anyone would want an individual stamp graded, since they don’t sell for much, but PSA will oblige and take the grading fees. Perhaps people submit individual stamps when the 4-in-1 card as a whole is damaged. Because of the perforations around the stamps, the cards bend easily, and you will often see small creases emanating from the perforations to the edges of the cards.
July 28th, 2009 |
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error cards
A couple of weeks ago I added a search for error cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery, and since then I have been documenting the error cards in my database. Here are a couple more I never noticed: the 1959 Topps Jim Ray Smith and Dave Middleton cards have the wrong team logos on the front. In fact, the logos appear to be switched! I thought that if I looked at the cards’ placement on an uncut sheet, I might see how their logos could have been swapped, but the two cards are not close together on the sheet. Perhaps it is just coincidence that Smith got Middleton’s Lion and Middleton got Smith’s Brown.
The 1959 Topps set has a large number of errors besides these swapped logos: misspelled names, incorrect player positions, a card picturing the wrong player, typos in the stats, and so on. I’m not sure how far to go with documenting the errors. Does anyone care if Bill Glass is a center on the front of the card and a tackle on the back?
July 27th, 2009 |
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Player Deaths
Bob Boyd, a receiver for the Los Angeles Rams from 1950 to 1957, passed away earlier this month. With Norm Van Brocklin quarterbacking, Boyd led the NFL in receiving yards in 1954 with 1212.
Pictured here is Boyd’s rookie card, a brilliant 1951 Bowman. He also appeared on 1955 Bowman, 1957 Topps, and 1958 Topps cards.
July 26th, 2009 |
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Funny Poses
July 25th, 2009 |
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Player Bios, Sites I Like
A few weeks ago I posted an entry about the impressive Ed Meador Hall of Fame Nomination site. Other people have their own favorite Hall of Fame candidates, of course, and some of them have built web sites, too. One such site is Crazy Canton Cuts, which at last count made a case for 39 players! In particular, the site owner would like to see Chris Hanburger inducted, and he has started a petition in Hanburger’s behalf.
Another site, Remember the AFL is dedicated to the American Football League, and it makes the case for 42 ex-AFL players. This list of candidates overlaps only a little with that of Crazy Canton Cuts, so the two sites together promote over 60 candidates.
Finally, a Google search for “pro football hall of fame petition” turns up a raft of petitions for individual players. A few not included in the sites above are L. C. Greenwood, John Brodie, Andre Tippett, Rickey Jackson, and Glenn Presnell.
So, in total, what is that, 65 or 70 candidates? Plenty of good reading, for sure. But wait a minute, then there’s Jerry Kramer, Alex Karras, Ken Stabler, Ken Anderson…
Tags:
Alex Karras,
Andre Tippett,
Chris Hanburger,
Glenn Presnell,
Hall of Fame,
Jerry Kramer,
John Brodie,
Ken Anderson,
Ken Stabler,
L. C. Greenwood,
Rickey Jackson
July 24th, 2009 |
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error cards, New in the Gallery
Last week I added an error card search to the Vintage Football Card Gallery, and since then I have been marking the error cards in my database. Here’s a good one: it’s a 1967 Philadelphia Raymond Berry card, but the image on the card is not Raymond Berry. Who is it? Check out the latest entry on my Mistaken Identities page.
My old Beckett catalog also lists a couple of other cards where the wrong player is pictured, but I can’t find other photos of the players to see for myself. One is 1955 Topps All-American #91, Bob Odell, which Beckett says pictures Howard Odell. Another is 1972 Topps #174, Adrian Young, which Beckett says pictures Rick Duncan. If I find other photos of these players, I will add the cards to the Mistaken Identites page.
July 23rd, 2009 |
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Football Card Trivia
If you browse through the 1952-1954 Bowman cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery, you will find a few that show the player with a white football. Two are pictured here: a 1953 Bowman Fran Polsfoot and a 1954 Bowman Doak Walker. According to profootballresearchers.org, the NFL and AAFC used a white football in night games from 1929 to 1956, to help the players see the ball in poor lighting. Wikipedia’s article on the Cleveland Browns says that in the 1950s, the NFL also prohibited teams from wearing white helmets and jerseys in night games, so that the white ball could be seen against the players’ uniforms. Some teams thus had different helmets and jerseys for day and night games.
The other mysterious white football is the big, ugly one with the player’s name in it that is part of the design of 1953 Bowman cards. To me, the big football overwhelms the rest of the card and makes the 1953 set the least attractive of the early Bowmans. Might it have been inspired by the NFL’s use of the white ball? On Pete Pihos’s card, Bowman actually put the big white ball in his hands!
July 21st, 2009 |
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Adventures in Card Dealing, General Collecting Info
A customer once bought a Lions team card from me because his friend played for the Lions the year the card was printed. Unfortunately, his friend wasn’t in the picture, and the customer got upset. What he didn’t realize is that the card companies would use the same photos year after year, and the photo on his team card was an old one. I explained and offered a refund, but I didn’t hear back from him.
Here are the cards I used to demonstrate to him that I wasn’t making it up. The Philadelphia Gum Company used the same image of Mick Tingelhoff in 1964, 1965, and 1967. (They used a different image in 1966, but it wasn’t as good as this one.) If you browse through the Football Card Gallery, you can find many more instances where the card companies reused photos. Joe Namath is another good example: look for the Band-Aid on his head in cards from 1968 through 1970.
Sometimes the companies would even recolor the player’s uniform if he happened to change teams. John Henry Johnson’s 1957 Topps card, which I showed in an earlier post, is a great example–though in this case, Topps got John Henry’s new team wrong.
July 19th, 2009 |
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error cards, Football Card Trivia
In a post last month I showed that the image on Bill Wade’s 1960 Topps card is reversed. Looking at my Beckett’s catalog this week, I found that the image on Doug Atkins’s 1960 Topps card is reversed as well. It’s not obvious when you look at that card by itself, but it is when you put it alongside his 1961 Fleer card. It’s funny how you can look at a card a hundred times and not notice an error like this.
I did a little ‘net search to look for bits of trivia about Atkins, and I found that he has an official site. The quotes by John Unitas and Jim Parker are worth a look.
July 17th, 2009 |
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error cards, New in the Gallery
Today I added the ability to search for error cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. You can combine that search with other searches and find, for example, all error cards of hall-of-famers or all error cards of Philadelphia Eagles. To do the fancy searches, see the Advanced Search page.
Though I have the search working, I don’t yet have all of the error cards identified in my database. If your favorite error card is missing, leave a comment and I’ll get it in.
Can you spot the error on the 1969 Topps Sonny Jurgensen card shown here?
July 16th, 2009 |
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Player Deaths
Pat Brady‘s granddaughter sent me a note a couple of days ago and told me that her grandfather had passed away. Brady was a quarterback and star punter for the Pittsburgh Steelers. According to RGJ.com, in the three years he played in the NFL, he led the league in punting average twice. In college at Nevada, he once kicked a 99-yard punt, the longest possible.
Pictured here is Brady’s rookie card, a 1953 Bowman.
July 12th, 2009 |
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Player Deaths
Lou Creekmur, a hall-of-fame offensive lineman, died last week. He played on the outstanding Detroit Lions teams of the 1950′s.
Pictured here is Creekmur’s rookie card, a 1951 Bowman. The back of the card says he was obtained by the Lions from the “frozen player pool,” which I had to look up. The frozen player pool, it turns out, was where the players from the AAFC were placed when that league folded, and the NFL had a special draft from the pool in 1950. Creekmur did not actually play in the AAFC, but both the Philadelphia Eagles from the NFL and Los Angeles Dons from the AAFC had drafted him in 1948, and evidently the Eagles did not still have the rights to him in 1950. (Instead of playing pro football in 1948, Creekmur stayed in school and got his masters.)
The Lions also obtained Bob “Hunchy” Hoernschemeyer from the frozen player pool. That doesn’t have a lot to do with Lou Creekmur, but Hunchy Hoernschemeyer is a great name, so I wanted to mention him.
July 11th, 2009 |
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Football Card Trivia, Sites I Like, Uniforms
Sometimes you get to a topic in a roundabout way. Last night I came across this terrific 1954 Bowman Jim Dooley card, and I thought I’d look for other cards that picture players in their College All-Star uniforms. I found John Brockington’s 1972 Topps rookie card, which I believe shows him in an All-Star jersey with the stars airbrushed off. It’s not an Ohio State jersey, and it’s not a Packers jersey, but it has the style of an All-Star jersey, and Brockington played in the All-Star game in 1971. (Topps also used this image of Brockington on his 1972 All-Pro card, where they airbrushed his jersey Packer green.)
Anyway, looking around the internet for pictures of players in their All-Star uniforms, I found a site called The Chicago Charities College All-Star Game 1934-1976. What a great site! It provides the background and history of the game, scores from each year, a summary of each year’s game, game records, the MVPs, and yearly attendance. Some of the early games drew over 100,000 fans!
The MVP awards were given only to the college players, and the positions that the MVPs played show how the game evolved. In the 30′s and 40′s, nearly all of the MVPs were running backs, and there was even an offensive lineman, Bill Fischer. In the 50′s and 60′s, as the passing game became more prevalent, the award went mainly to quarterbacks. In the late 60′s and 70′s, when the NFL dominated the game and stuffed the All-Star offenses, many of the awards went to the All-Stars’ defensive players. The college MVP in the final game, in 1973? The punter, Ray Guy!
Find Jim Dooley cards on: eBay, Nearmint’s Cards.
July 10th, 2009 |
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Football Card Trivia
This might be common knowledge among old football fans, but I learned today that the man on this 1974 Topps card, Brian Dowling, was the inspiration for the character B.D. in the Doonesbury comic strip. Dowling was the star quarterback at Yale during the time that Gary Trudeau, Doonesbury’s creator, attended school there.
Though Dowling had a stellar high school and college career, he got significant playing time only one season in the NFL. To my knowledge, this is his only football card.
According to his Wikipedia article, B.D. never removed his helmet, making excuses that his ears stuck out or that he had bad hair. Perhaps this was inspired by Dowling, too: his hair indeed looks a bit unruly!
Search for Brian Dowling cards on: eBay, Nearmint’s Cards
