Players on Other Players’ Cards

July 9th, 2009  |  Published in Football Card Trivia, New in the Gallery  |  12 Comments

Roman Gabriel on back of 1966 Philadelphia Dennis Claridge cardSteve Liskey, from The Cowboys Guide, recently asked me if I planned to add scans of the backs of the cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. My first thought was “Are you out of your mind, Steve?” But then I told him that scanning just the fronts has taken an enormous amount of time, so I will probably never get to the backs. (Another visitor had a more modest suggestion: providing a single example of a card back for each set. Now that sounds like something I can accomplish–someday.)

It turned out, though, that Steve was particularly interested in the backs of 1966 Philadelphia cards. Why? Well, because as shown on the Dennis Claridge card to the right, each card in the 1966 Philly set has a player pictured on the back who is not the player on the front. (That’s Roman Gabriel on the back of the Claridge card.) Steve collects Dallas Cowboys cards, of course, and he wanted to know which cards have a Cowboy on the back.

Now that’s a serious collector, and I understand completely the desire–no, the need–to get every one of whatever type of cards you collect. If you collect a certain team, of course you want the cards that picture your team’s players on the back. So what I will probably do–again, someday–is note which players appear on the backs of the 1966 Philly cards so that the cards show up in searches for the players and their teams.

It had occurred to me even before Steve wrote that a player collector might want any cards on which his player was pictured, whether the player was identified on the card or not. That’s why, for each 1966 Philadelphia team play card, I have added the names of all the players appearing in the action on the front of the card. For example, for the Cowboys play card shown here, I included all five players pictured–three Cowboys and two Giants–in the list of players appearing on the card.

While adding players for the team play cards, I noticed that some of the players don’t appear on cards of their own. For example, to my knowledge, the Cowboys play card above is the only card on which Jerry Rhome appears. (Jerry is the holder for the kick.) I sell a lot of cards to players’ friends and relatives, and I suspect that this extra information will someday help a player’s grandson find his granddad on a card he didn’t know existed.

Search for 1966 Philadelphia cards on: eBay, Nearmint’s cards.

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Responses

  1. CowboysGuide says:

    July 10th, 2009 at 10:15 AM (#)

    1965 Philadelphia has photos on the back also, you just have
    to rub them to get to them. Here’s the lists I have that pertain to those sets and the photos on the backs;
    http://www.thecowboysguide.com/1965p.html
    http://www.thecowboysguide.com/1966p.html

    And yes, you are correct about Jerry Rhome on the Cowboys Play Card. That is his only football card that he is on the front of. He is on the back of #98 Marlin McKeever from the 1966 Philly set.

  2. nearmint says:

    July 10th, 2009 at 10:28 AM (#)

    Hi Steve, thanks for joining in. Here’s a question for you: Generally, rubbing the rub-off portion of a card knocks its grade down a notch. In your Cowboys collection, would you prefer to have 1965 Philly cards with the backs rubbed and the Cowboys’ pictures exposed, or would you rather have higher-grade cards with the pictures still hidden? Is enough to know that your guy is under there, even if you can’t see him? 🙂

  3. CowboysGuide says:

    July 10th, 2009 at 12:25 PM (#)

    The backs of the Cowboys cards in the 65 Philly set don’t have any Cowboys players on them, so I like to have mine NrMt. I don’t have much of a problem rubbing the backs of mid-grade cards from the rest of that set looking for my Cowboys players, it just takes time. I’ve been trying to grab inexpensive lots of commons and rubbing those. Not every one is going to show a photo from my experience. You’ll get some duds because of age and condition. I’m about 1/3 done with the list for that set. When I complete it, I’ll submit it to you so you can share it with your readers. I’ve found a couple key cards already like the Johnny Unitas (#66 Nick Pietrosante) and Mike Ditka card back (#116 Clarence Childs). There is also an error I found as two cards say that the awswer is on the same card.
    I have another lot of 44 cards sitting at home to go through.

  4. CowboysGuide says:

    July 10th, 2009 at 2:02 PM (#)

    To further explain your previous question, I do intend to find good, clear photos of the Cowboys on the backs, and have them in my books so you can see them. From what I’ve found, only about 1 in 5 cards expose a clear image.

  5. cowboycards says:

    July 11th, 2009 at 7:22 AM (#)

    So few action photos were actually used in the 1960s that it seems like a very doable project not only to catalog each card a player is on but also collect ’em…

    A project for you steve!

  6. nearmint says:

    July 11th, 2009 at 9:52 AM (#)

    Hi Marty, good to hear from you. Hmm, what am I doing to attact the Cowboys fans? 🙂

    That’s an interesting idea. Yeah, offhand I can’t think of many: 1961 Topps, 1966 Philadelphia, 1967 Philadelphia. Oh, but then there’s also the black-and-white action pic on each 1962 Topps player card.

  7. Fred Goodwin says:

    July 16th, 2009 at 8:45 PM (#)

    Another Cowboy fan here!

    Thanx to Steve mentioning them on Marty’s forum a year or so ago, I’ve also begun collecting Philly cards that have Cowboys on the backs — thanx Steve & Marty!

  8. nearmint says:

    July 18th, 2009 at 8:02 AM (#)

    Hi Fred, good to have you checking in!

  9. Andy says:

    January 6th, 2010 at 11:55 AM (#)

    Hi:

    Please also note that the players on the backs of the 1966 Philly set do not necessarily have their own card in the set, Jerry Rhome being one of them, and Craig Morton, for example. Most of the Cowboys, for example, do not have a card example in the 1966 Philly set at all, and some like Jerry Rhome, the back of the 1966 card is THEIR ONLY CARD in existence!

    Andy

  10. Andy says:

    January 6th, 2010 at 11:56 AM (#)

    Also to answer your question regarding 1965 Philly backs, for me, a rubbed card is less appealing/valuable than a non-rubbed back.

  11. nearmint says:

    January 10th, 2010 at 5:26 AM (#)

    Thanks for that, Andy. Someday I’ll get to documenting the players on the backs. Someday.

    I actually heard from Mr. Rhome after this post. He said that he appeared on some cards as a coach: Seahawks 1977 Pacific Trading Cards, and 1989 Pacific Steve Largent Trading Cards. I found the Largent cards, but I haven’t picked them up yet.

  12. More Players on Other Players’ Cards | Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog says:

    June 3rd, 2010 at 9:26 AM (#)

    […] year I wrote about players who appeared on other players’ cards, and I noted that some players who made guest appearances never appeared on cards of their own. […]