Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

Happy Tuesday! Here are this week’s interesting eBay auctions for vintage football cards and related collectibles:

• Just for fun, I did a search for the most expensive football cards on eBay. I assumed that vintage cards would appear on top, but the first one was seventh!
• Some football-playing U.S. presidents: JFK, a different JFK, and Gerald Ford.
• Here’s a wax box of 1972 Topps 3rd series cards. It’s cool that the wrappers came in four different color combinations–or were there even more?
• Here are some non-vintage beauties, especially if your name happens to be Chad or Bill!
• CFL Hall of Famer Royal Copeland recently passed away. Here he is on a sharp 1956 Shredded Wheat CFL card.
• A beautiful full set of 1970 Kellogg’s cards: 56 PSA 9s and 4 PSA 8′s.
• Six 1977 Topps Mexican wrappers, which, according to the description, is the full set plus one duplicate.
• Like multi-sport issues? Here are full sets of 1974 and 1975 Sugar Daddy cards.
• Last, but certainly not least, an all-PSA 8 set of 1972 Topps cards!

Ray Abruzzese, a defensive back from 1962 to 1966 for the Buffalo Bills and New York Jets, passed away on August 22. He was a member of Alabama’s NCAA National Championship team in 1961 and a member of Buffalo’s AFL Championship team in 1964. I found a photo of the Alabama team on the university’s web site and a photo of the Bills team at livingprimetime.com.

Abruzzese had two football cards with the Bills, and both are error cards. His rookie card, the 1963 Fleer card pictured here, has his last name misspelled. The error on his 1964 Topps card is worse: the card pictures Ed Rutkowski, not Abruzzese. (For more cards that picture the wrong player, see my Mistaken Identities page.)

Abruzzese also appeared on a rare–and pricey–1963 Jones Dairy milk bottle cap. His name is spelled correctly on the cap, and the picture on it is his. I do not have the cap, but I found a clear image of one in an eBay listing.

Yesterday I added virtual uncut sheets of 1963 Topps cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. I have not seen an actual 1963 Topps sheet, but I was able to figure out the sheets’ configuration by looking at miscut cards and applying a little logic. Unfortunately, these sheets are not yet completely accurate, and I could use your help. I believe I have all of the player cards in the right places, but I have not yet figured out the order of the team cards and checklists within their rows. If you happen to find any badly miscut team cards, checklists, or neighboring cards, please send me pictures of them.

With these sheets I introduced a new feature: I started highlighting the cards that are scarcest in high grades. This helps illustrate how a card’s position on the sheet affects its availability. As I have time, I will go back and do this for the other sheets, as well.

(Click on the image to see the full sheets.)

Dick Stanfel and Jack Butler were named yesterday as the 2012 senior finalists for induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. You can read the announcement and see the players’ biographies on the Hall of Fame site. This is the second time Stanfel has been chosen as a senior finalist; the first time was in 1993.

In the 1950s, defensive players and offensive linemen often got short shift, card-wise, and that is the case with these two players. Butler, a defensive back, played for the Steelers from 1951 to 1959, but he did not appear on a football card until his seventh season, 1957. His rookie card, a 1957 Topps, is pictured here. He also appeared on 1958 Topps and 1959 Topps cards.

Stanfel, who played from 1952 to 1958 for the Detroit Lions and Washington Redskins, was a five-time first team All-Pro at guard. He appeared on just two football cards, his 1955 Bowman rookie card, pictured here, and a 1958 Topps.

Chances are very good that at least one of the two senior nominees will be elected to the Hall. The Senior Nominees page of the Hall of Fame web site shows that at least one senior candidate has been elected each year since 1998.

• Find Dick Stanfel football cards on eBay
• Find Jack Butler football cards on eBay

Bill Gray, an offensive lineman for the Washington Redskins in 1947 and 1948, passed away on August 18. OregonLive.com has an account of his life.

Gray appeared on one football card, the 1948 Bowman card pictured here.

You can see Gray’s career NFL statistics at pro-football-reference.com.

Last night I added a virtual partial uncut sheet of 1967 Topps cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. I modeled it after a proof sheet I found in an internet search. For now the partial sheet is on my Sheets In Progress page. At some point I will move it to a page of its own.

One bit of trivia: the cards in the bottom row of the partial sheet also appeared in Milton Bradley’s Win-A-Card game in 1969.

Click the image to see the rest of the partial sheet. (When the “In Progress” page comes up, scroll to the bottom.)

Happy Tuesday! Here are this week’s interesting eBay auctions:

• Bargain of the week? A PSA 8 1955 Topps All-American Red Grange card starting at $9.99!
• Miscut lovers (or should I say lovers of miscuts?), here’s a great lot of miscut 1955 Bowman cards.
• My uncle had one of these Kessler’s NFL helmet displays in his tavern. Each column represented a division, and you would move the helmets up or down as the season progressed and the standings changed. Very cool.
• For having an MC qualifier, this is a pretty darn nice Bart Starr rookie card.
• On the subject of MC qualifiers, I didn’t know that PSA assigned them to cards they graded poor. But here’s a 1948 Leaf Levi Jackson card graded PSA 1 MC. It actually doesn’t look too bad!
• Here are a couple of 1967 Topps cards that were originally part of Milton Bradley’s 1969 Win-A-Card game: Joe Namath and Fred Biletnikoff. You can tell because each of them has a sliver of a 1968 Topps baseball card on the top or bottom. Judging by the labels, BVG recognized the variation, but PSA didn’t. (For a list of the other cards in the game, see my blog article about it.)
• I have not seen this Jim Brown 1962 Kahn’s reprint before. Can anyone tell me when it was printed, etc.? I did a web search but didn’t find any more.
• Not cards, but cool nonetheless: 11 Ohio Blue Top matchboxes picturing Frank Gifford in action!
• Finally, a 1948 Bowman Art Faircloth card with two different backs printed on it. If you look at my 1948 Bowman uncut sheet page, you can see that this is the result of printing the back of the third sheet over the back of the first sheet.

While surfing the web this week, I found a picture of a partial sheet of 1955 Topps All-American football cards. The partial sheet contains 50 cards, half of the 100 cards in the complete set. Today I created a virtual version of it and added it to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. For now it’s on my “In Progress” page, but I will probably promote it to its own page when I get time.

Norm “Wild Man” Willey, a defensive end from 1950 to 1957 for the Philadelphia Eagles, passed away on August 18. ESPN’s web site has a report of his death. Willey was a Pro Bowler twice, in 1954 and 1955. According to the book The Eagles Encyclopedia, Willey once got 17 sacks in one game–but this was before sacks were counted among the official NFL statistics.

Willey appeared on three football cards, the 1954 Bowman and 1956 Topps cards shown here, and a 1955 Bowman card. I especially like the 1956 Topps card, in which he appears to be imitating the logo in the upper right corner.

Scott Alpaugh, who gave us a great site about 1977 Topps Mexicans (see my earlier article), has now created another, 1948 Leaf Football. The 1948 Leaf set has a large number of variations, some cataloged by the price guides and some not, and Scott is determined to collect them all. (One of them, a Jug Girard with a white background, is shown here.) He also collects autographed copies of the cards, which is undoubtedly quite a challenge.

Check out Scott’s new site!

George Wilson Jr., quarterback for the Miami Dolphins in their first season, 1966, passed away on August 6. The Miami Herald web site has a report of his death. Wilson led the Dolphins to their first regular season win, which came against Denver in the sixth week of the season.

The card pictured here is Wilson’s 1967 Topps card, issued the season after he played for the Dolphins. He also appeared on a 1967 Royal Castle Dolphins card. The Royal Castle card is one of the rare short prints in the set, and I have never seen one.

Wilson’s father, George Wilson Sr., was the Dolphins’ coach in their first season. Before joining the Dolphins, Wilson Sr. coached the Detroit Lions for eight seasons. He made a cameo appearance on a Detroit Lions Play of the Year card in the 1964 Philadelphia set.

Today I added a virtual uncut sheet of 1956 Topps cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. I modeled the sheet after a picture of a partial sheet I found on the ‘net. This is the first Topps sheet I have seen with a pattern to the numbering; this allowed me to extend the partial sheet to a half-sheet.

(Click the image to see the whole virtual sheet.)

Happy Tuesday! Here are this week’s interesting eBay auctions for vintage football cards:

• Merlin Olsen didn’t have just football cards. He appeared on Little House on the Prairie cards, too!
• Here’s the “other” Four Horsemen of Notre Dame card: a 1954 Topps Scoop.
• I’ve always liked logo and helmet cards. Here’s a full set of 1975 Schweibel/Sunbeam Bread helmet stickers and a near set of 1960 Fleer AFL logo inserts.
• Two Diamond matchbook covers of Hall of Famers, issued before the players’ rookie cards: Joe Stydahar and Ken Strong.
• Feeling lucky? Here’s a full box of 1977 Topps Mexican wax packs.
• 1951 Berk Ross cards had a unique box. There were initially two players to a card, and the two halves were separated by a perforation. You can usually find both pairs and singles on eBay.
• For the football card collector who must have everything: a set of 1974 Bazooka “Play Football Safely!” cards. Keep the field clean!

Pete Pihos, Hall of Fame end for the Philadelphia Eagles, passed away this morning, according to the team’s web site. Pihos played nine seasons for the Eagles, from 1947 to 1955, and he made the Pro Bowl the last six of those seasons. He was also a member of the Eagles’ 1948 and 1949 NFL Championship teams. Pihos’s page on the Pro Football Hall of Fame web site has a summary of his career.

Pihos had two rookie cards, the 1948 Leaf and 1948 Bowman cards pictured below. The 1948 Leaf card shown here is the variation with yellow numerals; there is also a rare variation with blue numerals. You can see all of Pete Pihos’s cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

I came across a cool web site today, SportingOregon.com. The home page says it is “a private collection of early Oregon sports memorabilia.” It includes a gallery of 1953, 1956, and 1958 Oregon Ducks football cards–my favorite part, of course. Check it out!