Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

This uncut sheet of 1946 Sears Cleveland Browns cards was on eBay last week. 1946 was the Browns’ first year; they were part of the new eight-team All-American Football Conference. The Browns were the AAFC champions all four years of the league’s existence, 1946-1949, and they joined the NFL when the AAFC folded in 1950. As far as I know, these Sears cards were the only cards printed of an AAFC team.

Conspicuously absent from this set are Marion Motley and Bill Willis, African American stars who later made the Pro Football Hall of Fame. According to Willis’s Wikipedia page, the two did not play in the Browns’ 1946 game against the Miami Seahawks, because they were forbidden by law to play against white players in Miami.

This small Sears set contains pre-rookie cards of three other Hall of Fame players: Otto Graham, Dante Lavelli, and Frank Gatski. (For more pre-rookie cards, see my pre-rookie card page.) The black-and-white head shots are nice, but otherwise the cards are unremarkable: all eight have the same ad on the front and the team’s 1946 schedule on the back.

The set is rare–these particular cards are the first I have seen–so it is hard to assign a value to the cards. The highest bid in this auction was $2000, and it did not meet the seller’s reserve. Perhaps the seller will list it again with a better description and a scan that shows the corners of the sheet.

For more interesting auctions, see my Interesting eBay Auctions page.

Here is the answer to a trivia question that Pastor Scott asked a few weeks ago. The question was “What player appeared on two different cards in one year for two different teams and two different leagues? Both cards were major card companies.” Scott had to tell me: it’s Corky Tharp.

Pictured here is Tharp’s 1960 Topps CFL card. He played for the Toronto Argonauts in 1955 and from 1957 to 1959, and Topps evidently expected him to stay with the team in 1960. He didn’t, though. He instead joined the New York Titans (later the Jets) of the new American Football League, and he appeared on a 1960 Fleer AFL card, as well. He spent one season with the Titans, playing nine games at defensive back.

While the fronts of 1960 Topps CFL cards are much different than their NFL counterparts, the backs of the cards in the two sets are alike. The only difference is that the text on the CFL cards is repeated in French. Even the text in the cartoon, which you can faintly see on this card, appears in both French and English. You can also see that repeating the text didn’t leave much room for detail.

I really like the fronts of the cards, with the colored portraits over the black and white action photos. Topps had used black and white photos for backgrounds in their classic 1955 Topps All-American set, and they would use them again as insets on their 1962 NFL cards. In 1962 they matched the inset photos with the players on the cards–or most of them, anyway–but they did not do that on the 1960 CFL cards. The photos on the CFL cards appear to be random, and Topps used each photo on multiple cards.

There are 88 cards in the 1960 CFL set, and for vintage AFL and NFL card collectors, it includes a few familiar names. Veryl Switzer, Ken Carpenter, and Tobin Rote had played in the NFL in the 50s, and Rote went on to play for the Chargers and Broncos in the 60s. Randy Duncan, Ernie Warlick, and Gerry McDougall also joined AFL teams in the 60s. And Joe Kapp and Sam Etcheverry later quarterbacked in the NFL.

Wayne Patrick, who played fullback for the Buffalo Bills from 1968 to 1972, passed away on March 23. For most of his career, Patrick was the lead blocker for O.J. Simpson. He gained over 1000 yards rushing, as well.

The sharp 1972 Topps card shown here was Patrick’s only appearance on a mainstream football card. He also appeared on a 1972 Sunoco stamp.

Altie Taylor, who played eight years for the Lions and Oilers, passed away on March 14. Taylor led the Lions in rushing for three of his seven years with the team, and he was Detroit’s all-time leading rusher when he left for Houston. He is now the team’s fourth all-time leading rusher.

Like Merlin Olsen, who died three days earlier, Taylor was a Utah State alumnus. He had a 105-yard kickoff return for the Aggies in 1967, still a school record.

Taylor’s rookie card is the 1971 Topps card pictured here. He also appeared on a few others, but I don’t have pictures of the newer ones. The ones I don’t have can be found on eBay.

Cliff Livingston, who played linebacker twelve years for the Giants, Vikings, and Rams, died on March 13. He played in four NFL championship games with the Giants, and they won one of them, in 1956. Livingston was an All-Pro in one season, 1961.

Though he had a long, successful career, Livingston appeared on only one regular issue card, the 1962 Topps card shown here. He also appeared on a 1962 Post Cereal card.

Livingston’s brother, Howie Livingston, also played in the NFL.

Judging by his football cards, Y.A. Tittle seldom took off his helmet. From 1953 to 1964, the only Tittle card I know of that shows him bareheaded is his 1961 Topps card. Here he is in his many helmets:

I think it must have been Tittle’s preference to wear his helmet for photos, since I can’t think of any other player who appeared helmeted on so many cards. As I’ve written before, I usually don’t like images of players wearing their helmets, because the helmets cover too much of the players’ faces. But Y.A.’s many appearances in his helmet made him look natural in it, like Doonesbury’s B.D.

Besides Merlin Olsen, these former NFL players passed away in the past two weeks:

• Dick Koeper, Falcons tackle, 1966 (story, stats)
• Leon Manley, Packers lineman, 1950-1951 (story, stats)
• Ken Dyer, Chargers and Bengals defensive back, 1968-1971 (story, stats)
• Perry Brooks, Redskins defensive tackle, 1978-1984 (story, stats)

To my knowledge, Koeper, Manley, and Dyer did not appear on cards. Brooks appeared on one card that I know of, the 1982 Topps card shown here.

Most football fans know by now that Merlin Olsen passed away this morning. Lots of people published articles about his career today, so I’ll just show you some of his vintage cards. According to the Beckett blog, Olsen appeared a total of 338 cards, but most of those were issued after the end of his career.

A couple of these are actually stamps, so I don’t know if Beckett included them in their count. Hold your cursor over any thumbnail image to see what set it’s from, and click on it to see a full-sized scan.

Missing from this group are his 1971 Bazooka card, 1971 Dell card, 1972 NFLPA stamp, and possibly other oddballs I haven’t seen. He also appeared on two or three Topps poster inserts in the late 60s and early 70s. That’s a remarkable number of cards for a defensive player.

I wondered if perhaps Olsen appeared on a Little House on the Prairie card, if there were such cards. So I searched eBay and I found a set that was issued in Argentina. Alas, Jonathan Garvey, Olsen’s character, didn’t have a card in the set.

Two of Olsen’s brothers, Phil and Orrin, also played in the NFL. Phil appeared on a 1972 Sunoco Stamp and on a 1973 Topps card while he was Merlin’s teammate with the Rams.

Occasionally you will see uncut sheets of vintage cards up for sale. Studying uncut sheets can give you insight into why some cards are much harder to find than others. For example, by looking at the uncut sheets for a set, you can see why some cards are considered short prints or double prints. For most sets, the price guides indicate which cards are short prints or double prints, and they adjust the cards’ prices accordingly. I say most, because I believe some short prints are not documented–those in the old Philadelphia sets, for instance.

(Image from legendaryauctions.com; click on it to see whole sheet.)

Short prints and double prints are just part of the story. A card’s position on an uncut sheet can also affect its scarcity, because cards on the corners and edges of the sheets were more likely to be damaged in production. I have not seen this factored into price guides’ prices, though: if two common cards were printed in equal numbers, the price guides will usually–if not always–assign them the same price.

The price guides do assign higher prices to the first and last cards in a set, asserting that the first and last cards generally got more wear than the other cards. Supposedly, lots of kids sorted their cards into numerical order, put rubber bands around them, and banged them around. In practice, though, I find that first and last cards aren’t noticeably scarcer in high grades than the other cards, unless they happened to be on the corners and edges of the sheets.

A recent–and timely!–thread in the Collectors Universe forums includes pictures of numerous uncut baseball card sheets and a nice discussion about short prints and double prints. The thread shows the patterns that the card companies used when arranging cards from sets of different sizes on the sheets. Depending on the size of the set (or series within a set), the card companies repeated rows of cards on the sheets in different patterns. I recommend reading the thread.

Pictured here is the card I always use as an example of one that is scarce because of its position on the sheet. It’s a 1960 Fleer Jim Woodard card, and it was in the bottom-left corner of the sheet. The Woodard is easily the toughest card in the set–PSA has graded only four of them 7 or better–and a PSA 8 would sell for hundreds of dollars on eBay. Most other PSA 8 1960 Fleer commons sell for $10-20.

Over the past year, I have put together a number of “virtual” uncut sheets in the Vintage Football Card Gallery, including one for the 1960 Fleer set. I have included a little discussion for each sheet, as well. Rather than repeat the information here, I’ll just point you to the pages for the sheets:

• 1948 Bowman
• 1948 Leaf
• 1949 Leaf
• 1950 Bowman
• 1951 Bowman
• 1952 Bowman Large
• 1953 Bowman
• 1954 Bowman
• 1955 Bowman
• 1956 Topps
• 1957 Topps
• 1958 Topps
• 1959 Topps
• 1960 Fleer
• 1960 Topps
• 1961 Fleer
• 1962 Topps
• 1963 Fleer
• 1963 Topps
• 1964 Philadelphia
• 1965 Philadelphia
• 1966 Philadelphia
• 1967 Philadelphia
• 1968 Topps
• 1969 Topps
• 1970 Topps Super

Here are more of the ABCs:

• Previous: T is for Topps, Part 4: the 1970s
• Next: V is for Values
• All of the ABCs

We haven’t had a trivia question in a while. Feeling smart today?

Question #7: What do the four players pictured here have in common?

Scroll down slowly; the answer is after the sponsored links. For more information on a card, click on it or hold your cursor over it.

Sponsored Links

Answer: They are all members of the Canadian Football League Hall of Fame.

Here are their bios on the CFL Hall of Fame web site:

• Martin Ruby
• Dick Huffman
• Sam Etcheverry
• Joe Kapp

• Previous question

Topps has printed football cards every year from 1955 to 2009, but since this is a vintage football card blog, I need to stop somewhere. Which years are considered vintage? There is no official definition, but most collectors put the end of the vintage era between 1970 and 1975. As a kid, I collected cards until 1973, so that’s where I’ll stop with this article.

1970 Topps

The 1970 Topps football set is the only set I completed as a kid. I’m not nostalgic about it. Looking at all of the football sets that preceded it–Topps and otherwise–I think the 1970 Topps set is drab. As in 1958 and 1967, Topps used a portrait style on their 1970 cards, and the “matting” covers a large portion of the images. Also, starting in 1970, Topps no longer had the rights to print team logos on cards. In 1968 and 1969, Topps used the team logos to dress up the cards, but in 1970 the logos were gone. Not only that, but in 1970, Topps used only player photos that did not include helmets, in order to avoid showing the team logos on them. Sets prior to 1970 included a lot of nice photos of players with their helmets, but starting in 1970, if Topps showed a helmet on a card, they had to airbrush its logo away.

Like the 1969 Topps set, the 1970 Topps set was released in two series of 132 cards. Card #132, the second series checklist, was included in both series, so it is a double print. As in the 1969 set, some of the second series 1970 cards have scratch-off backs. As in 1969, most of them went unscratched. (See S is for Scratch-Offs.)

Though I’m not fond of the set, there was one great thing about it: every second series pack included a Super Glossy insert card. The 1970 Topps Super Glossies are easily my favorite insert set, and perhaps my favorite set overall.

1971 Topps

1971 Topps is my favorite regular 1970s set. The colored borders on the 1971 Topps cards make them brighter than the other 70s Topps cards, and also more challenging to find in high grade. (Cards of AFC players have red borders; cards of NFC players have blue ones.) The cards don’t have team logos on them, but the little cartoon football players on the front are kind of fun. There’s a different cartoon player for each position.

The 1971 Topps set was the first set to acknowledge the players that were All-Pros the previous season. The All-Pros’ cards have borders that are half blue and half red, like the Paul Warfield card shown here. The 1971 Topps set was another 263-card set released in two series, and its second series checklist appeared in the first series, as well.

It is in the 1971 Topps set that we see the first airbrushed helmets. Though the set doesn’t include any “in action” cards labeled as such, three of the regular cards–Joe Kapp, Jake Scott, and Dennis Shaw–show images of the players in action, and the logos on their helmets have been airbrushed away. This was the start of a dreadful practice.

1972 Topps

In 1972, Topps fully embraced airbrushing. The 1972 set included 42 “Pro Action” cards, and the helmets on those had to be airbrushed. Topps also used sideline photos for a few players, and they had to airbrush the helmets on those, as well. While they were at it, if a player had been traded to a different team, Topps just airbrushed an old photo to give him new colors. Why bother getting a new photo when you can just airbrush an old one?

The 1972 Topps set did have some firsts: it was the first to include “league leaders” cards, and it was the first to include cards for the previous year’s playoff games. Both of those are nice features. It was also the first to give All-Pro players both a regular card and an All-Pro card–overkill, if you ask me. Some star players–Floyd Little, for example–appear on four cards: regular, All-Pro, league leaders, and Pro Action.

This set was also the first–and, to my knowledge, only–football set to be released in three series. The third series appears to have been an afterthought. Why do I think this? Well, the first two 1972 series had a total of 263 cards, like the full 1969, 1970, and 1971 sets. The second series checklists from those sets appeared in both the first and second series, and so did the 1972 second series checklist. If Topps had planned a third series in 1972, wouldn’t they have continued this pattern and included a third series checklist in the second series? Also, 38 of the 88 third series cards are All-Pro and Pro Action cards, basically fillers. The remaining 50 cards are player cards, and though a few are Hall of Famers, none of them are major stars. The biggest names of the day–Unitas, Sayers, Simpson, Bradshaw, Namath, Staubach, Butkus, Griese, and Dawson–are all in the first or second series. And none of the league leaders who appear on cards 1 through 8 are among the player cards in the third series.

The third series was also released very late in 1972. I know I had lost interest in cards by the time they came out, because the only third series cards I had in my childhood collection were from a pack my brother gave me for Christmas. Evidently not many other kids bought the third series cards, either, because when I resumed collecting in 1989, they were scarce and worth much more than cards from the first two series. Larry Fritsch Cards apparently bought a lot of unopened third series cards, though, and as Fritsch has been selling them, the prices have fallen. Not only have a lot of third series cards entered the market recently, but they’ve all been brand new! Fritsch still has unopened boxes of 1972 Topps third series cards for sale.

1973 Topps

In 1973, Topps went to the other extreme and released all of their football cards in a single series. If the modern era is defined by large sets released in a single series, then 1973 is the beginning of the modern era for football cards. Topps was now clearly going for quantity over quality: there are 528 cards in the 1973 Topps set, and they are the plainest of the plain. Gone are any nice touches, even simple things like using the team’s colors in the little ribbon on the left side of the cards. Topps did, at least, use the same ribbon colors for all of the players on the same team. All St. Louis Cardinals cards, for example, have blue-and-orange ribbons.

Surprisingly, though Topps dramatically increased the number of cards in their set in 1973, they omitted some of the special cards they introduced in 1972. Like the 1972 set, the 1973 Topps set contains league leader cards and cards of the previous year’s playoff games, but it does not include Pro Action or All-Pro cards. The 1973 set does include three funky boyhood picture cards, but the bulk of the set is player cards. The large increase in the number of player cards meant that a lot of players made their first appearance on a card in 1973. I might be off by a card or two, but I count 196 rookie cards in the 1973 set! To me, the number of new faces is the set’s best feature.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a 70s set without some serious airbrushing. Here are a couple of beauties. The Paul Robinson card looks like a face-in-hole picture.

As I said at the top, 1973 was the last year I collected cards as a kid. Coincidentally, that’s about the end of what most collectors consider the vintage era. It’s also when Topps appeared to go into full cost control mode. By 1973, Topps was using the sparest of designs, they evidently chose not to spend money to license team logos, and they crudely airbrushed old photos of players rather than acquiring new ones. If I remember correctly, they did not include inserts in packs of 1973 cards, either.

I presume that with no competition, the company was just minimizing costs to maximize profits. Or, maybe, because inflation was high in the 70s, they were trying to reduce costs so they could keep prices low. Their customers–kids like me–didn’t care much what the cards looked like, so long as our favorite players were on them. Now, though, as vintage card collectors, we have dozens of old sets to choose from, and I prefer most 50s and 60s cards to those from the 70s.

• Previous: T is for Topps, Part 3: 1964-1969
• Next: U is for Uncut Sheets
• All of the ABCs