Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

Yesterday I put a nice group of PSA-graded 1950s Topps football cards up for sale at nearmintcards.com. Most are from the 1957 Topps and 1959 Topps sets. Included is the PSA 9 1957 Topps Mike McCormack card pictured below. McCormack was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1984.

Also see my 1959 Topps virtual uncut sheet and my blog articles on 1957 Topps and 1959 Topps football cards.

I read today on boston.com that Jon Morris will be inducted into the Patriots Hall of Fame this year. Morris was a center in the AFL and NFL for fifteen seasons: eleven with the Patriots, then three with the Lions and one with the Bears. He was an Pro Bowler in each of his first seven seasons, according to his page at pro-football-reference.com.

The card pictured here is Morris’s rookie card, a 1965 Topps. Topps apparently liked the image, because it also appears on his 1966 Topps and 1967 Topps cards.

You can see all of Jon Morris’s cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. You can also search the Gallery for cards of other members of the Patriots Hall of Fame.

Here’s another old record from the nfl.com individual records page: in the 1963 season, Don Hultz, a rookie for the Minnesota Vikings, recovered nine opponents’ fumbles. That broke Joe Schmidt’s record of eight, set in 1955, and no player has come close since. According to The Vikings Timeline at vikingupdate.com, Hultz’s feat earned him a new nickname, “The Magnet.”

In 1964, the Vikings traded Hultz to the Philadelphia Eagles, and he never again came close to his 1963 record. Hultz’s page at pro-football-reference.com says that in his last eleven seasons, he recovered just three more opponents’ fumbles.

The card pictured here is Hultz’s rookie card, a 1968 Topps. He also appeared on a 1972 Sunoco Stamp and a 1973 Topps card.

Last week I added virtual uncut sheets of 1952 Bowman Large football cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. From what I have read, Bowman simply enlarged their 1952 Small sheets to get the 1952 Large sheets, and when they printed the Large sheets, some cards on the edges of the sheets were truncated. The cards on the edges of the sheets thus became the short prints in the set.

Click the image below to see all of the 1952 Bowman Large sheets. Also, for an overview of the topic, see an earlier blog article, U is for Uncut Sheets.

Jim Keane, a receiver for the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers from 1946 to 1952, passed away this morning. His obituary on the Bears web site includes a summary of his career and a recent photo.

Keane was a member of the Bears NFL Championship team in his rookie season. The next season, 1947, he led the league in receptions, and he finished second in receiving yards and receiving touchdowns. Despite his stellar performance in 1947, Keane did not have a card in the 1948 Leaf and 1948 Bowman football card sets. To my knowledge, he appeared on only one card, the 1950 Bowman card pictured here.

• See Jim Keane’s stats at pro-football-reference.com.

Frank Ziegler, who played halfback for the Philadelphia Eagles from 1949 to 1953, passed away on March 6. According to his page at pro-football-reference.com, Ziegler finished second in the NFL in rushing in 1950. He was a member of the 1949 Eagles team that finished 11-1 and won the NFL Championship.

The card pictured here is Ziegler’s 1952 Bowman Small football card. He also appeared on a 1952 Bowman Large card and a 1953 Bowman card. Bowman used the same image for all three cards.

In yesterday’s article about 1974 Nebraska Cornhusker Playing Cards, I included an image of the Wonder Monds card. Von Spalding, of Von’s Card Blog, saw the article and pointed out that a player named Wonder Monds had also appeared on an Atlanta Braves baseball card. Von guessed that Wonder Monds the Brave was the son of Wonder Monds the ‘Husker, and, as it turns out, he guessed correctly. An article at bleacherreport.com says that Wonder Monds the Brave is actually the third Wonder, and his full name is Wonderful Terrific Monds III.

After Nebraska, Wonder II played three seasons for the CFL’s Ottawa Rough Riders and one season for the San Francisco 49ers. Wonder III played several years of minor league baseball in the Braves, Rockies, and Reds farm systems. And Wonder III’s brother, Mario, spent two seasons with the Cincinnati Bengals and Miami Dolphins.

The card pictured here is Wonder Monds II’s 1973 Nebraska Cornhuskers Playing Card. Son Mario appeared on a 2001 Bowman Chrome football card, which I know nothing about, but I did see a couple on eBay. Wonder III appeared on a handful of baseball cards, and you can find those on eBay, as well.

Yesterday I added 1974 Nebraska Cornhuskers Playing Cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. The 54-card deck includes cards of 52 players, Memorial Stadium, and Head Coach Tom Osborne. The cards’ design is nearly identical to that of the year before, but there is an easy way to tell the two years apart: in 1974, all of the players’ jerseys have “NEBRASKA” printed on them. For a couple of players, this required some cutting-and-pasting–literally, it appears. Willie Thornton’s image, for instance, is the same as on his 1973 card, except for the “NEBRASKA” pasted onto his jersey. Maybe Thornton had his eyes closed in his 1974 photo, so they used the one from the year before? Bobby Thomas’s image also appears to have gotten some primitive photoshopping.

The 1974 ‘Huskers team finished 9-3, tied for second in the Big Eight, and ranked #9 nationally. (Oklahoma went undefeated and won both the Big Eight and the National Championship.) By my count, 14 players in the 1974 ‘Huskers playing card deck made it onto NFL teams, at least for a few games. Wikipedia’s 1974 Cornhuskers page lists a few additional team members who played in the NFL, CFL, or WFL.

Yesterday I added virtual uncut sheets of 1950 Bowman football cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. There are 144 cards in the 1950 Bowman set, and they were printed on 4 sheets of 36. Compared to the other virtual sheets I have done, these were relatively easy, because the cards were arranged on the sheets in numerical order. The price guides don’t say that any of the 1950 Bowman cards were short prints, but it appears to me that the fourth sheet was printed in somewhat smaller numbers than the others.

Also see U is for Uncut Sheets for an overview of the topic.