Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

To a card collector, “oddballs” are collectible items that have some characteristics of cards–small size, two dimensions, pictures of players, team logos, and so on–but are not traditional trading cards. Some examples are coins, bottle caps, cap liners, discs, stamps, stickers, patches, pins, and playing cards. Many of them came on or in packages of food. Some were regional and featured a particular team.

I distinguish oddball items from inserts (see I is for Inserts), though some inserts also fit the description above. Why? Well, since inserts came in packs of cards, most of them are familiar to collectors, and there are enough of them to group them into a category of their own. Oddball items are the unfamiliar, the hard to categorize, the things that go under “miscellaneous.” They have brand names you might never have heard of, like Glendale and Drenks and Salada.

Any number of items can be considered oddball, and I’ll list just a few here. I don’t collect many of them–you have to draw a line somewhere–so I’ll mostly provide links to other places. The only oddballs I have in my collection are playing cards and stamps, which aren’t too far removed from trading cards.

Stamps

I am familiar with three sets of vintage football stamps that were not inserts: 1964 Wheaties, 1969 Glendale, and 1972 Sunoco. Each of the sets had an accompanying album into which you could stick the stamps. I recently added the 1964 Wheaties stamps to the Vintage Football Card Gallery, and you can read about them in an earlier blog post. (One of the Wheaties stamps, Raymond Berry, is pictured here.) I don’t yet have the 1969 Glendale stamps, but that didn’t stop me from writing a little about them, too.

I don’t have 1972 Sunoco stamps yet, either, but they are plentiful on eBay. They appear to have been distributed both in packs and on sheets. The base set is huge: 12 offensive and 12 defensive players for each of the 26 teams, for a total of 624 stamps. On top of that, Sunoco released an 82-stamp update set. Among the 706 stamps are numerous players who never appeared on cards. I like seeing unfamiliar players on cards (or on oddballs), so one of these days I’ll buy a set of the Sunoco stamps. PSA’s set registry shows the composition of both the base set and the update set.

Discs

1976 was the year of the disc. Five sets of football discs were printed that year: Coke Bears Discs, Crane (potato chip) Discs, Buckman Discs, Saga Discs, and Pepsi Discs.

1976 is newer than I typically deal with, and I have never had much interest in the discs, so I don’t know a lot about them. I assume that the same company printed all of them, since I don’t know of any others printed before or since 1976. A friend sent me a couple of Crane Discs once; they’re about the size of a beer coaster. Pictured here is one of them, Charley Taylor.

The PSA registry shows all of the players in the disc sets, and you can see lots of examples on eBay.

• 1976 Buckmans Discs: composition, examples
• 1976 Coke Bears Discs: composition, examples
• 1976 Crane Discs: composition, examples
• 1976 Pepsi Discs: composition, examples
• 1976 Saga Discs: composition, examples

Playing Cards

I initially included playing cards under Oddball items, but there are enough of them that I thought they deserved their own category. See P is also for Playing Cards for a list of vintage playing cards that picture NFL and college football players.

Other Oddballs

As I said at the top, I don’t own many oddball items, and my knowledge of them is limited. Here are a few more, along with links to the set compositions and some examples. As I learn more about them, I’ll give these oddballs sections of their own. If I am missing your favorite, let me know and I’ll add it here.

• Previous: N is for National Chicle
• Next: P is for Philadelphia
• All of the ABCs

In 1935, the National Chicle Gum Company printed the first set of football cards that featured NFL players. The backs of the cards indicate that the company had planned to print 240 cards (see the second-to-bottom line on the card back below), but they stopped far short of that, at 36. That’s a pity, because the cards are little works of art.

There are six rookie cards of Hall of Fame members in the National Chicle set: Dutch Clark, Ken Strong, Cliff Battles, Turk Edwards, Clarke Hinkle, and Bronko Nagurski. Because so few football cards were printed before 1935, most of the rest of the cards in the set are rookies, too. The single non-rookie card is Knute Rockne, who appeared in the multi-sport 1933 Sport Kings set. Rockne, the Notre Dame coach, is the also the only person in the National Chicle set who was not an NFL player. This suggests to me that some of the cards beyond the initial 36 would have been of college players and coaches. There were only eight NFL teams in 1935, and 240 cards distributed among eight teams would have been 30 cards per team. Rosters were smaller back then (pro-football-reference.com shows 31 players on the Packers’ 1935 roster), and 30 cards per team would have covered practically all of the players in the league.

Three of the teams represented in the National Chicle set either moved or changed names before the next major football card offerings in 1948. The Boston Redskins moved to Washington in 1937. The Pittsburgh Pirates became the Steelers in 1939. The Brooklyn Dodgers became the Brooklyn Tigers in 1944, and they merged with the Boston Yanks in 1945. The Yanks eventually became the Indianapolis Colts, by way of New York, Dallas, and Baltimore.

When I added the National Chicle set to the Vintage Football Card Gallery, I was surprised to learn that three of the players’ names were misspelled. Homer Griffith‘s name is misspelled “Griffiths” on his card, Phil Sarboe‘s name is misspelled “Sorboe,” and John Dell Isola‘s last name is misspelled “Isola”–without the “Dell.” Misspelled names are not unusual on vintage cards, but considering the care taken to design the cards’ images, I would not have expected the cards to have spelling mistakes.

While the fronts of the cards are beautifully designed, the backs are interesting in their own way. Rather than focusing on the players’ stats, as more recent cards do, the card backs give tips on how to play the game, using the players as examples. There are four slight variations of the card backs, having to do with the size and placement of Eddie Casey’s signature, whether his credentials are shown, and whether the copyright line is included on the card. You can see examples of the four variations–as well as a long discussion on which variations appear on which cards–in a thread on the Collectors Universe message board.

You can see the full set of 1935 National Chicle football cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

• Previous: M is for Mayo Cut Plug
• Next: O is for Oddball
• All of the ABCs

The first set of football cards was the 1894 Mayo Cut Plug tobacco card series. The 35-card set, which was distributed in tins of chewing tobacco, includes only college players from Princeton, Harvard, and Yale. There is a nice article about the Mayo cards on The Harvard-Yale Football Gallery, a site dedicated to the Harvard-Yale rivalry. According to the article, one of the Princeton players in the set, “Poe,” was related to Edgar Allan Poe. Another card in the set pictures an unnamed Yale player, initially listed as “Anonymous,” but later identified as John Dunlop. The Dunlop card is the rarest card in the set.

You can see the entire set of 1894 Mayo Cut Plug cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. A big thanks to Goodwin and Co. Auctions for allowing me to use their scans.

• Previous: L is for Leaf
• Next: N is for National Chicle
• All of the ABCs

The Leaf Gum Company printed football cards in 1948 and 1949. The cards from the two years are very similar. In fact, except for the variations in the 1948 cards, for players who appear in both sets, the fronts of the cards appear identical. The backs are different for the two years, fortunately, and the copyright date on the bottom of the back tells which year a card is from. Shown here are Leaf’s two Herb Seigert cards, the first from 1948, and the second from 1949.

The images on the Leaf cards started as black and white photos, and then someone colored the images’ backgrounds and the players’ uniforms. On some cards, such as the Harry Szulborski card below, the coloring makes it look as if the player’s head was cut out and pasted on a colored background.

My favorite feature of the Leaf cards is that many have both the player’s first name and nickname on the front: ‘Slingin’ Sammy Baugh, ‘Bullet’ Bill Dudley, Charlie ‘Choo Choo’ Justice, and so on. A quick bit of trivia: which player’s nickname is in double quotes? Answer: Clyde “Bulldog” Turner‘s.

The 1948 Leaf set consists of 98 cards, with cards 1-49 being easier to find and cards 50-98 being difficult. The set features both pro and college players, with slightly more than half of the cards being pros. The bigger stars of the day–mostly pros–are concentrated in the first half of the set, and most of the college players are in the second half.

The set contains many variations: mostly in the colors used, but in the players’ names as well. The 1948 Leaf set composition page on PSA’s web site lists most of the variations, but I don’t believe it is complete. It lists two variations of the Pete Pihos rookie card, for example, one with yellow numbers and one with blue. I have also seen a variation with greenish numbers, though. It is pictured here with the yellow-numbered version for contrast.

Because there had been no major football card issues since 1935 National Chicle, all of the 1948 Leaf football cards are rookie cards. Fourteen of the players in the set are of Hall of Famers, making it a key set for Hall of Fame rookie card collectors. Fortunately for those collectors, only two of the Hall of Fame players–namely Leo Nomellini and Chuck Bednarik–are in the tougher second half of the set. (Nomellini and Bednarik were both still in college at the time.) An article by Kevin Glew on the Collectors Universe web site lists the Hall of Famers and describes the other challenges facing 1948 Leaf collectors.

Compared to the 1948 Leaf set, the 1949 Leafs are not very interesting. The 1949 set contains only 49 cards, all pro players, and there are no new players in the set. Also, as I wrote above, there is no perceptible difference in the card fronts for players who appear in both sets. So Leaf’s 1949 offer was essentially half of 1948′s cards, but with different backs.

One odd thing about the 1949 set is that it is skip-numbered, with the numbers of its 49 cards scattered between 1 and 150. When I first learned this, I wondered if Leaf had intended to release more cards to fill in the gaps. It turns out, though, that they also skip-numbered their 1949 baseball set. That suggests to me that they were trying to trick kids into buying more cards, even if they already had the whole set. I’d call that just plain mean. It’s not surprising that this was Leaf’s last football set.

You can see all of the 1948 Leaf and 1949 Leaf cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

• Previous: K is for KDKA Steelers and Other Regional Sets
• Next: M is for Mayo Cut Plug
• All of the ABCs

Regional sets feature cards of players from only one team, and they were distributed in that team’s region by a local business, usually a food company. Because they cover only a single team, regional sets often include players who never appeared on a card from a major card company. They also often include cards of stars-to-be who did not appear in a major set until years later. There is a whole page of these “pre-rookie” cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

Because they had a limited distribution, cards from regional sets are often challenging to find. The demand for them is typically also limited. I suspect that their scarcity is a turn-off to some collectors, and some collectors aren’t interested in cards of teams they don’t root for. For whatever reason, collectors’ interests seem to lie mostly with the major issues. I love the regionals, though.

1968 KDKA Steelers

The cards in regional sets are often much different from the major companies’ offerings. 1968 KDKA Steelers cards, for example, are a non-standard size, they have a “landscape” orientation, they picture multiple players, and they have a glossy finish that was unusual at the time they were printed. They also include a card of the entire Steelers coaching staff, the only such vintage card I know of.

There are only 15 KDKA cards, but altogether they picture 46 players and coaches, grouped by position. This, too, is innovative, and I wonder why the major companies never did it. I don’t know how the cards were distributed, but KDKA is a television station in Pittsburgh that is still in operation. You can see the full KDKA Steelers set in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

1960 Mayrose Cardinals

1960 Mayrose Cardinals cards are also an unusual shape, with rounded corners, like playing cards. Because the round corners hold up better than square ones, the cards I see are often in great condition. There are only eleven cards in the set, unfortunately, but since the Cardinals had few stars in 1960, the set does include a couple of players who never appeared in a major issue.

The Mayrose Cards cards were distributed around St. Louis in packages of Mayrose franks and bacon. 1960 was the year that the Cardinals moved to St. Louis from Chicago, and I’d say that this regional issue is a sign that the city was excited about the move. Mayrose brand lunchmeats are still produced by Armour-Ekrich Meats, but to my knowledge they haven’t included cards since 1960. You can see the full Mayrose Cardinals set in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

1961 Lake to Lake Packers

1961 Lake to Lake Packers cards were distributed by the Lake to Lake Dairy in Wisconsin. Half of the cards in the set are plentiful, and the other half were severely short-printed and are difficult to find. I estimate that the non-short prints outnumber the short prints ten-to-one. Some of the cards appear to have been stapled to the packages of the products they were distributed with, because the short prints I see on eBay often have staple holes or a corner ripped off where the staple had been. (A non-short print with staple holes would not be worth listing.)

The Lake to Lake set includes four pre-rookie cards of Hall of Fame players: Herb Adderley, Ray Nitschke, Willie Davis, and Willie Wood. It also includes Bart Starr’s rarest card and Emlen Tunnell’s only card as a Packer. All of these except the Adderley are short prints. You can see the whole Lake to Lake Packers set in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. The short printed cards are identified there.

1959 and 1960 Bell Brand Rams

1959 and 1960 Bell Brand Rams cards were distributed in the Los Angeles area in packages of Bell Brand potato chips and corn chips. The cards are sturdy and attractive, with a high-gloss finish unlike other issues of the time. Unfortunately, particularly in the 1959 set, a great number of the cards were cut off-center. Each card features a facsimile of the player’s autograph, but some of the autographs are tiny relative to the size of the cards. It’s strange that someone designed such nice cards, but then put bitty autographs on them and cut them off-center.

As I wrote when I added the set to the Gallery, the 1959 Bell Brand set contains a pre-rookie card of Hall of Fame coach Sid Gillman. Gillman left the Rams after the 1959 season to become the first head coach of the Chargers. The set also contains a pre-rookie card of Ed Meador, whose web site I featured in an earlier post.

As I wrote in yet another post, the 1960 Bell Brand set appears to have been released in two series. Both series are scarce, and the second series is scarcer than the first. One card, Gene Selawski, was reportedly pulled from distribution when he left the team early in the season.

Between the two sets, I see 12 or 15 players that did not appear in any other set. Because of that, and because the cards are so attractive, I’d call these my favorite regional cards. You can see most of the 1959 Bell Brand set and over half of the 1960 set in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

1961 Golden Tulip Chargers

Like the Bell Brand Rams, 1961 Golden Tulip Chargers cards were distributed in bags of potato chips. Unlike the Bell Brands, they are small (about 20% shorter than a standard card), black and white, and plain. The card stock is thin, more like thick paper than cardboard, and the cards appear to have been hand cut from a bigger sheet. The backs of the cards advertise an 8-by-10 picture of the Chargers that you could obtain by turning in 5 cards of the same player. It’s hard to guess how many cards the offer took out of circulation.

Like the 1960 Mayrose Cardinals, the 1961 Golden Tulip cards celebrated the arrival of a new team in town. After spending their first year in Los Angeles, the Chargers moved to San Diego in 1961.

The best thing about the Golden Tulip set is that 6 of the 22 cards feature players that I don’t believe appeared on any other cards. You can see all of the Golden Tulip cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

1969 Tresler Comet Bengals

1969 Tresler Comet Bengals cards were given away at Tresler Comet gas stations around Cincinnati. The cards are on thin cardboard stock, and the pictures are brown and white, except for the players’ numbers and facsimile signatures being colored orange. The brown, white, and orange is not a particularly attractive effect, but it is another example of the creativity seen in regional cards.

To me the highlight of the set is Sam Wyche. I believe this is his only card as a player. You can see the whole set of Tresler Comet cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

1967 Royal Castle Dolphins

1967 Royal Castle Dolphins cards, according to the backs of the cards, were free to Royal Castle Junior Dolphin members at Royal Castle restaurants. The card backs say that two cards (actually they say “photos”) would be available each week during the season.

Apparently not many Junior Dolphins took advantage of the offer, because the cards are extremely scarce. I have only 17 of the 27 cards, and the remaining 10 are short prints. Among the short prints is a Bob Griese pre-rookie card, of which I have only seen pictures. One of the pictures is on the SGC web site.

The Royal Castle cards are big, about 25% taller and wider than a standard card. Surprisingly, though 1967 was just the Dolphins’ second year in the league, only five or so of the players in the set did not appear on cards in major issues. Most of the other players appeared in at least one of the 1964-1967 Topps AFL sets, which included a large number of players from each team.

You can see most of the 1967 Royal Castle Dolphins cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. I would like to get the rest, so if any of you Junior Dolphins have some to sell, let me know!

1961 National City Bank Browns

1961 National City Bank Browns cards were distributed on 6-card panels from which you could cut the cards by hand. There were 6 panels of cards, so there are 36 cards in the set: 35 player cards, and one unnumbered Quarterback Club card. Including the Quarterback Club card in the set seems goofy to me, but both PSA and Beckett include it, so what do I know?

Surprisingly, though 35 cards covered most of the players on the team, by my count only 5 of the players did not appear on cards in any other set. The Browns were one of the top teams in the early 1960′s, and evidently most of their players were card-worthy.

My favorite card in the set is a Len Dawson pre-rookie card. Dawson played several years for the Steelers and Browns before jumping to the AFL.

You can see the whole set of 1961 National City Bank Browns cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

• Previous: J is for Joe Namath–and the 1965 Topps Tall Boys
• Next: L is for Leaf
• All of the ABCs

Joe Namath’s 1965 Topps rookie card is easily the most expensive regular issue football card of the 1960s. Come to think of it, it might also be more expensive than any regular issue 1950s card. Why is it so valuable? Well, just being a rookie card of a Hall of Fame player is enough to make it expensive, since collecting Hall of Fame rookie cards is a popular endeavor. (See H is for Hall of Famers.) The 1965 Topps “tall boy” set is also a classic, and one of the most popular vintage sets. And Namath himself, of course, was a flamboyant personality playing on a large market team. Remember his “guarantee” that the Jets would beat John Unitas and the Colts in Super Bowl III? How about his pantyhose ad, and his Noxema ad, with Farrah Fawcett?

Still, I have a hard time justifying the price of the Namath card, and it might be another card whose price is inflated by the price guides. (See the Jim Lansford discussion in B is for Bowman.) Just compare Namath’s rookie card to Bart Starr’s 1957 Topps rookie card: the Starr card is only slightly easier to find in high grade than the Namath, 1957 Topps is also a classic set, the Packers won a lot more championships, and most people think Starr was a better quarterback. Yet the Namath sells for two or three times more than the Starr? It seems that either the Namath is overvalued or the Starr is undervalued.

Might the Namath be more valuable because it is a short print? Well, it’s possible that the price guides added a premium for that, but I am not convinced that it even is a short print. The guides say that there are 132 short prints in the set (or 44 double prints, depending on how you look at it), but that sounds fishy to me. Assuming that the 176 cards were released in a single series–and I haven’t read anything to the contrary–my guess is that they were printed on a 198-card sheet, with 22 double prints. I don’t know why Topps would have used more than one sheet if the cards all fit on one. My Beckett catalog isn’t much help; it says merely that “Since this set was not printed in the standard fashion, many of the cards were printed in lesser quantities than the others.” Well, gee, Dr. Beckett, what fashion was it printed in?

To see what I’m talking about, you can look at a half-sheet of 1969 Topps basketball cards on the sportscards.info web site. The basketball cards are also tall boys, and the half-sheet of tall boys holds 9 rows of 11 cards, or 99 in total. A full sheet of tall boys would thus hold 198 cards.

An article on the PSA web site sings the praises of the 1965 Topps set and describes the challenges in finding high-grade cards: poor centering, print marks, etc. Since that article covers the basics, I won’t repeat them here. One point in the article is inaccurate, though, or at least outdated: it says that the set’s two checklists are scarce, and that one of the checklists is the second-most valuable card in the set. PSA’s own population report, however, shows that many of the other cards in the set are scarcer than the checklists in high grades, and some of them sell for more than the checklists. (The last PSA 8 Jim Colclough to sell on eBay, for example, went for $909.) If what I have observed in other sets holds true, the cards most difficult to find in high grades are the ones that were on the corners and edges of the sheets.

The PSA article doesn’t mention that there were only eight AFL teams in 1965, so the 1965 Topps set has over 20 cards for each team. That is far more cards per team than most vintage sets provided, and it allowed Topps to print cards for players who typically would not have appeared on a card. In particular, the set contains an unusual number of cards of linemen and defensive players, and many of those are the players’ rookie cards. Pictured here is one example: the only card of defensive back Gerry Bussell. (Thanks to Pastor Scott for this observation–see his comment on D is for Defensive Players.)

As they did every year from 1960 to 1967, in 1965 Topps grouped the cards by team. I like this feature: first in the set come all of the Patriots, then come all of the Bills, and so on. Also, if I know a player’s team, I can locate his card quickly, even if I don’t know his card number. This is because the teams are in alphabetical order by city, and the players are in alphabetical order within each team. I wonder if it is coincidence that 1960 through 1967 were also the years that Topps had competition in the football card market, and, except in 1960, their competitors grouped the cards by team, as well. In 1968, when Topps again had no competition, they reverted to the random ordering they had last used in 1959.

• Previous: I is for Inserts
• Next: K is for KDKA Steelers and Other Regional Sets
• All of the ABCs

In 1960, card companies started inserting little extras into packs of football cards: stickers, posters, tattoos, decals, punch-outs, and so on. The wrappers for the packs showed what insert was inside, as you can see on the wrapper page of the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

Not surprisingly, card collectors collect the inserts as well as the cards. (We collect the wrappers, too, of course–no part of the pack is wasted!) Most of the inserts, because they invited licking and sticking and pinning up and punching out, are harder to find than the regular cards. Some of them, such as 1968 Topps Stand Ups and 1970 Super Glossies, in my opinion are nicer than the regular cards.

Some of the inserts I know nothing about, except for their mention on the wrappers. The 1963 Fleer wrapper says there’s a Goofy Gag Card inside, and the 1964-1966 Philadelphia wrappers say the packs include comic tattoos. If anyone has pictures of those inserts, I would like to see them.

I know at least a little about the rest of the inserts from 1960 to 1971. Following is a short description of each.

1960 Fleer AFL Decals and 1960 Fleer College Pennant Decals

Fleer’s first football cards included a decal insert in each pack, either an AFL team logo or two college pennants. The two types of decals are considered two different sets, though to my knowledge they were distributed as if they were a single set. The 1960 Fleer football set was issued in a single series (in fact, all of them were printed on one sheet), and I believe both types of decals were included in packs of that series. The Vintage Football Card Gallery has scans of all of the decals in both the AFL Team set and the College Pennant set.

1960 Topps Metallic Stickers

In 1960, perhaps reacting to Fleer’s innovation, Topps included their first inserts in football card packs. The Topps inserts were metallic stickers representing both college and pro teams. Topps had the rights to print cards of NFL players in 1960, so the pro teams they put on their stickers were the NFL teams. Unlike the Fleer decals, the 1960 Topps college and pro stickers are considered part of a single set.

Pictured here are two of the stickers, Notre Dame and the St. Louis Cardinals. (1960, incidentally, was year the Cardinals moved to St. Louis.) The stickers don’t scan well, unfortunately, and any wear on the metallic finish appears in the scan as gray. If you imagine that the mottled gray is shiny, like chrome, you’ll get the picture. See the Vintage Football Card Gallery for the entire set of 1960 Topps Metallic Stickers.

1961 Fleer Magic Message Blue Inserts

I don’t know what the 1961 Fleer Magic Message Blue Inserts look like, but judging by the 1961 Fleer wrappers (see the Vintage Football Card Gallery’s wrapper page), the inserts were included in both series. Each insert contains a question about pro or college football, such as “Has the Rose Bowl always been played in California?” PSA’s set registry shows the complete set of questions in the set.

1961 Nu-Card Pennant Stickers

Each 1961 Nu-Card football pack included an insert that held two college pennant stickers. Two of the inserts are pictured here. You can find more pictures on eBay, and you can see the full list of pennant inserts in the PSA Set Registry. A lot of the colleges represented aren’t known for their football programs–e.g., Colby, Coker, and Kings Point–and these stickers might be the only place to see those colleges on anything resembling a football card.

Amazingly, there are only 80 cards in the 1961 Nu-Card football set, but there are 269 different sticker inserts! Many of the colleges are repeated, but they’re paired up differently to make different inserts.

1961 Topps Cloth Emblems (a.k.a. Flocked Stickers)

I have just one 1961 Topps Cloth Emblem sticker insert, the one pictured here. Bleah. It says Green Bay Packers, but it doesn’t picture a Packer, it doesn’t have a Packers logo, and it’s not even in Packers colors. The sticker is perforated so you can separate the “A” from the team emblem. I learned from an entry in the Topps Archives blog that this was so a kid could pull the letters off and use them to spell his name.

The full set of emblems–comprised of AFL, NFL, and college teams–is listed on the PSA registry site. The emblems for the NFL teams, NFL insignia, and most of the college teams came in 1961 Topps first series packs, which contained cards of NFL players. In PSA’s list, the first series emblems are the ones that were always paired with the same letter, e.g., “AIR FORCE FALCONS V.”

The emblems for the AFL teams, AFL insignia, and three more college teams came in second series packs, which contained cards of AFL players. Each second series emblem could be found paired with either of two letters. PSA’s list shows the two possible letters separated by a slash, e.g., “OREGON DUCKS C/N.” The letters that appeared on the stickers most often were the ones most commonly found in boys’ names. I don’t see Q and X at all, so Quincy and Xavier had to improvise with O’s and I’s.

A list of the first series emblems also appears on the back of the second 1961 Topps checklist, card #122. (Thanks to Pastor Scott for pointing this out in his comment below.) The second series emblems, oddly, do not appear on a checklist. Also see the discussion in C is for Checklists. For additional pictures of the emblems, see eBay.

1962 Topps Football Bucks

1962 Topps Bucks are play money that pictures players instead of presidents. The bills were folded once to fit into the pack, but fortunately they were not folded across the players’ faces. Until I add the Bucks to the Vintage Football Card Gallery, you can see more pictures on eBay and the set composition in the PSA set registry.

1965 Topps Magic Rub-Offs

1965 Topps Magic Rub-Offs are magic, and you can rub them off. Sorry, but I don’t have any, and that’s all I know about them. For these, also, you can find pictures on eBay and see the set composition in the PSA set registry.

1966 Topps Funny Rings

Pictured here is the “Head with One Eye” 1966 Topps Funny Ring. As the diagram shows, you can punch the ring out from the card and adjust it to fit your finger, The Funny Rings don’t have anything to do with football; Topps apparently just thought they would appeal to the 10-year-old boys buying the cards. Strangely and unfortunately, the checklist for the Funny Rings is card number 15 in the 1966 Topps football card set, and it is considered necessary to complete the set. See the discussion in C is for Checklists. Also see eBay for more pictures of Funny Rings and the SGC set registry for the full list of rings.

1967 Topps Krazy Pennant Stickers

1967 Topps Krazy Pennant Stickers are also inserts that have little to do with football. Most of the team names on the pennants are Wacky Packages-style wordplays on real college and pro team names: Navel Academy, Michigan State Pen, and so on. A few are made up, such as Confused State and Diskotech. Fortunately, this time the checklist didn’t end up in the football card set. See eBay for more krazy pictures, and see the PSA set registry for the full krazy list.

1968 Topps Stand Ups

Packs of one of the two series of 1968 Topps football cards included “Stand Up” insert cards. This is my second-favorite insert set, with nice head-and-shoulders shots of the players. The cards are perforated such that you can punch them out and stand them up. As I wrote in D is for Defensive Players, Alex Karras is the only defensive player in the 22-card set, and the other 21 are offensive players. One of my previous posts provides more details on the set, and you can see the entire set of 1968 Topps Stand Ups in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

1969 Topps Stamps and Albums

1969 Topps Stamps came four to a card, and they were inserted with stamp albums in 1969 Topps packs. Nowadays we call the cards 4-in-1′s, because if a card still has its stamps intact, we wouldn’t think of pulling it apart. One of my previous blog entries, 1969 Topps 4-in-1 Oddities, has a description of the stamps and albums. The Vintage Football Card Gallery has pictures of the whole set of 1969 Topps stamps.

1970 Topps Super Glossies

1970 Topps Super Glossies came in second series 1970 Topps packs, and they are easily my favorite insert set. Depending on the day, they might even be my favorite of all football card sets. They are unlike any football cards printed before them, with bright colors, a glassy, almost wet-looking finish, and a hint of a 3-D effect. They are easy to find, but they are often off-center or have nicks on the back from the printing or packing machinery. The gloss is also susceptible to scuffing and scratches. You can see the whole 1970 Topps Super Glossy set in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

1971 Topps Game Cards

One series of 1971 Topps cards included small cards to be used for a game. Each game card pictures a player and indicates a number of yards gained or lost. The packs also included a piece of paper that unfolded into a diagram of a football field, and one of the possible game cards was a field marker. (There are way more field markers around than any of the player cards, so evidently Topps wanted to make sure you got one.)

Pulling the next card off your stack, you would move the field marker the distance indicated on the card. I don’t remember if any of us ever made it to the endzone, but I do remember that the game moved slowly and was kind of boring. We preferred the electric football games, where you set up all your players, flipped the switch, and watched all the players run to the corner of the field.

The game cards are often off-center, so it is a challenge to assemble a centered set. You can see all of the 1971 Game Cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

1968, 1970, and 1971 Topps Posters

Finally, Topps included posters in one series of cards in 1968, 1970, and 1971. (Topps issued two series of cards in each of those years, and in the non-poster series Topps inserted the Stand Ups, Super Glossies, and Game Cards discussed above.) I don’t collect posters, and since they’re not cards–or even card-sized–I haven’t tried to obtain them to put in the gallery. Check out eBay for examples of 1968 posters. You can see full sheets of 1970 and 1971 posters on the Topps Vault web site. PSA grades the 1968 and 1971 posters (they’re 5×7 inches), so the PSA site has checklists for 1968 and 1971.

• Previous: H is for Hall of Famers
• Next: J is for Joe Namath–and the 1965 Topps Tall Boys
• All of the ABCs

In any vintage set, the cards of players and coaches who have been elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame tend to be more popular–and hence more valuable–than the other cards in the set. Other factors come into play, of course: the relative scarcity of the cards, the positions of the players, the players’ teams, and whether a player was a star or a superstar. But if all else is equal, a Hall of Famer’s card will generally sell for more than a non-Hall of Famer’s. Recognizing this, hobby publications and web sites often use the abbreviation HOF to indicate that a player is in the Hall of Fame.

You can find the full list of Hall of Famers, naturally, on the Pro Football Hall of Fame web site. I referred to that site often as I built my own web sites, since most vintage cards were printed before my time, and I didn’t know all of the players who had been inducted. The biographies of the inductees added to my appreciation of the cards, and I recommend browsing through them on the Hall of Fame site.

A popular–and challenging–endeavor is to collect the rookie cards of Hall of Fame players. As I am writing this, 96 collectors have registered their sets in PSA’s Pro Football Hall of Fame Rookie Players set registry. One of the registered sets, JasP24′s NFL Rookie HOFers, includes images for nearly all of the cards in the set, and it is definitely worth a look. If you have the time, there is also a long discussion about the set and potential new inductees on the Collectors Universe Message Board. Each year, the Hall of Fame’s Senior Committee nominates two senior candidates for induction into the Hall, and there is always a lot of speculation as to who the nominees will be. (As I wrote in another post, this year’s nominees are Chris Hanburger and Les Richter.)

Because the rookie cards of Hall of Famers command a high premium, the rookie cards of potential Hall of Famers command a premium, as well. Another set in the PSA Set Registry, the Future HOF Rookie Players – Senior set, holds the rookie cards of the senior players who have the best chance of being elected to the Hall of Fame. Other people have their ideas, too: see my earlier post called More Pro Football Hall of Fame Candidate Web Sites. If you like to speculate, you can invest in the cards of these Hall of Fame hopefuls and wait to see if your players get elected. Don’t rely on the price guides to tell you how much to pay, though: the actual prices paid for high-grade Hall of Fame rookies and potential Hall of Fame rookies are often multiple times what the price guides say.

Not everyone in the Hall of Fame appears on a vintage card, unfortunately. After National Chicle released the first major football card set in 1935, there were no more major issues until Bowman and Leaf released cards in 1948. Many Hall of Fame players, coaches, and owners from the early days of the NFL were thus left out. The 1955 Topps All-American set, which includes players and coaches from years past (see A is for All-American), made up for some of the omissions, and that is one reason for its popularity.

The old-time Hall of Famers who went card-less in their league days finally appeared in some more recent Hall of Fame issues, such as the 1963 Stancraft playing cards and the 1974 and 1975 Immortal Roll sets issued by Fleer. Dave Witmer, author of the 1st and Goal blog, features some of the recent issues in his Hall of Fame Spotlight. The Immortal Roll cards are also easy to find on eBay. (Because these Hall of Fame sets were not major issues, a card from one of the sets is never considered a rookie card, even if it is the person’s first card. See R is for Rookie Cards for further explanation.)

While the Pro Football Hall of Fame is most significant to collectors, some individual teams also have halls of fame, and some collectors base their collections on those. The PSA Set Registry includes a Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame set, for example, and in it are the rookie cards of the members of the Packers team hall of fame. If your favorite football team has a hall or a wall or a ring of fame, you could choose that to be the focus of your collection.

On a closely related topic, H is also for Heisman Trophy Winners. Like cards of Hall of Fame players, cards of Heisman winners command a premium over cards of other players. And, as you might expect, PSA’s set registry includes a set for the rookie cards of Heisman Winners.

Whether you collect Hall of Famers, Heisman winners, rookie cards, members of your favorite team, or some combination, the Advanced Search page of the Vintage Football Card Gallery provides a way to search for them. It doesn’t include quite all of the old sets yet, but hopefully I’ll get there soon.

For details on any of the Hall of Fame rookie cards shown here, just pick the card to go to its gallery page.

• Previous: G is for Grading
• Next: I is for Inserts
• All of the ABCs

If you are going to collect cards, you need to learn to grade them. To the untrained eye there is little difference between a mint card and a near mint card, but there can be a tremendous difference in value between the two. Some sellers, not surprisingly, tend to overgrade their cards, and you need to be able to judge a card’s grade for yourself to ensure that you’re getting what you’re paying for.

Third-party grading companies can help in this regard: for a fee they will assign a grade to a card and encapsulate it in plastic. If you buy a card that has been graded by one of the major companies–Beckett Vintage Grading (BVG), Sportscard Guarantee Company (SGC), or Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA)–you can be reasonably assured that the card is accurately graded, authentic, and unaltered. There are other grading companies, as well, but be cautious if you stray from the big three.

The first step in learning to grade is to read the standards. Each of the big grading companies has a published set of standards, and they are all similar. Each has its quirks, though. PSA uses “qualifiers” to note exceptional problems on cards, such as a mark on an otherwise high-grade card, instead of just giving the card a lower grade. SGC uses a 100-point scale, but they actually use only a few values on the scale (10, 20, 30, etc.), and they map their 100-point scale to the more standard 10-point scale. (Strangely, 98 maps to 10, but 100 doesn’t map to anything!) SGC and Beckett distinguish between Mint, Gem Mint, and Pristine, but I don’t believe a grader could ever consistently apply these various degrees of “mint.”

Note that in the grading standards, many of the flaws a card can have are introduced in production: poor centering, print lines, wax stains, and so on. To a collector, these problems are as serious as wear and tear. Beware of eBay auctions that proclaim that the cards are from “vending,” because even if the cards were taken directly from a pack, it is likely that they have some factory flaws. “Vending,” “nice,” “L@@K,” and “Wow!” are useless terms in auction titles: a good seller will attempt to grade the cards, and put the grade in the title instead.

After you have gotten familiar with the grading standards, look at scans of graded cards online–on eBay, for example, or on my sales site–to see if you can tell why they are graded as they are. (This is easier to do with cards in lower grades. Cards in higher grades have smaller flaws, and the flaws are often hard to see in scans.) After looking at scans online, find some to examine in person: look at a friend’s, find some at a card show or dealer, or make some small purchases online. Start slow, to get the hang of it.

When looking at graded cards, you’ll find that the 1-to-10 grading scale is not linear. While you can probably tell a 2 from a 5 from across the room, you might need a magnifying glass to see the difference between a 7 and a 10. You will also find that sometimes a lower-grade card will look nicer than a higher-grade card. This could be because the grading company goofed–it happens–or, more likely, it could be because the grading standards don’t jibe with what your appeals to your eye. A card that is perfect except for a hairline crease on the back will most likely be graded a 5, while a card that is faded or out of focus could get an 8 or 9. A crease is a crease, but fading or poor focus is more of a judgment call, particularly if the grader doesn’t have similar cards to compare with the card he is grading.

Because your tastes might differ from the standards, and because grading to the standards is somewhat subjective, you will sometimes hear the mantra “Buy the card, not the holder.” All this means is that you shouldn’t base your decision to buy a card solely on the grade a grading company has assigned to it. Make sure that the card also appeals to your eye, and that you think it’s worth the price you are paying for it.

So now you’re thinking, hmm, if there can be such a small difference between a 7 and a 10, and if lower-grade cards can actually look better than higher-grade cards, and if the card grading companies sometimes make mistakes, why is a PSA 10 worth so much more than a PSA 7? Well, that’s a good question. The answer: card collectors (and collectors in general, I’m guessing) are an extremely fussy bunch, we’re continually trying to upgrade our collections, and the grading companies are usually accurate in their grading. We’ll often pay dearly to get a card with four sharp corners, rather than one with a fuzzy corner or two. Some collectors also participate in set registries, where you can show off your collections and compete with other collectors for the highest-graded sets. PSA, SGC, and Beckett all have set registries, and the competition between collectors can touch off amazing bidding wars in auctions for cards that are scarce in high grades. For the grading companies, the set registries were a stroke of marketing genius.

To sum it up, yes, grading is somewhat subjective, but a card’s grade is nonetheless key to determining its value. If you plan to spend much money on cards, you should learn to grade so that you don’t have to rely on sellers’ opinions. For expensive or high-grade cards, third-party grading companies can offer assurance that the cards meet their grading standards. But consider your own tastes, too. Do you prefer good centering or sharp corners? Does a tiny crease bother you if the card is otherwise flawless? How important is the back to you? Collect the cards that appeal to you, but learn to grade so you can determine what to pay for them.

(More on pricing later. For now see my pricing page.)

• Previous: F is for Fleer
• Next: H is for Hall of Famers
• All of the ABCs

The Fleer Corporation printed football cards each year from 1960 to 1963. In 1960, 1962, and 1963, Fleer had rights to the AFL players, while their competitor, Topps, had rights to the NFL players. In 1961, both companies printed cards of both AFL and NFL players.

The 1960 Fleer set contains players and coaches from the original eight AFL teams. Since 1960 was the first year of the AFL, many of the players were coming to the league from college, and they are shown in their college uniforms. 1959 Heisman winner Billy Cannon is one example, in his LSU uniform. Other players are shown in uniforms of NFL teams they played for in prior years: George Blanda, for instance, is in a Bears uniform. Some of the players in the set were either cut before the season or did not get any playing time, judging by the records at pro-football-reference.com. Jim Woodard and George Blanch, both with the Raiders, are two players who do not appear on that site.

I recently created a page in the Vintage Football Card Gallery that shows a virtual uncut sheet of 1960 Fleer cards. As you can see on that page, an uncut sheet contained all 132 cards in the set, so no cards were short-printed. Because of where they were positioned on the sheet, however, some cards are much more difficult to find in high grade. The scarcest card is Jim Woodard, in the bottom left corner of the sheet. The corners of the uncut sheets evidently got damaged just as the corners of cards do.

The 1960 Fleer set contains the rookie cards of Hall of Famers Ron Mix, Hank Stram, and Sid Gillman, as well as the rookie cards of Jack Kemp and Heisman Trophy winner Billy Cannon. (Sid Gillman also has a pre-rookie card in the 1959 Bell Brand Rams set.)

The 1961 Fleer set contains 220 cards, and it was released in two series: the first with 132 NFL players, the second with 88 AFL players. The cards in each series are sorted by team nickname. In the first series, the Bears cards are first, then the Browns, Cardinals, Colts, Cowboys, and so on to the Vikings. The second series has the Bills, Broncos, Chargers, etc. Interestingly, most of the photos of the NFL players show them standing, hands on hips, but most of the photos of the AFL players are action shots.

The 1961 Fleer virtual uncut sheet page shows what the second series sheets looked like, and it shows how the cards’ placement on the sheet has affected their availability in high grade. Though the price guides assign higher values to the second series cards, in reality they are more common than the first series cards, and they sell for less.

The 1961 Fleer set includes the rookie cards of two Hall of Famers, Jim Otto and Don Maynard, both AFL players. Because Topps also printed cards of AFL players in 1961, Otto and Maynard also have rookie cards in the 1961 Topps set. The 1961 Fleer set also contains two notable errors: the player on Goose Gonsoulin’s card is not Goose Gonsoulin, and the Packers logo is backward on every Green Bay Packers card.

Finally, the set reflects the changes to the leagues in 1961: the Vikings were an NFL expansion team, and the AFL’s Chargers moved from Los Angeles to San Diego.

The 1962 Fleer set contains 88 cards, and it appears to have been printed in smaller numbers than the other Fleer sets. The cards are attractive, but they suffer from poor quality control: many of them were cut off-center, and many have large amounts of wax on the back. The cards are grouped and ordered by city: Boston first, then Buffalo, Dallas, Denver, Houston, New York, Oakland, and San Diego. I have not seen an uncut sheet, but because the first four cards in the set are scarce in high grades, I’ll bet that they were on the left edge, as they are were on sheets of 1963 Fleer cards.

The only Hall-of-Famer rookie card in the 1962 Fleer set is that of Billy Shaw. Shaw is the only player in the Pro Football Hall of Fame who never played in the NFL.

The 1963 Fleer set contains 89 cards: 88 players and an unnumbered checklist. The addition of the checklist caused the Bob Dougherty and Charles Long cards in the set to be short printed, as discussed on my virtual uncut sheet page for the set. The set also has a variation that none of the price guides acknowledges: cards with numbers divisible by 4 come both with and without a bottom stripe on the back. See the 1963 Fleer uncut sheet page for a discussion of that, too.

The 1963 set contains the rookie cards of three Hall of Famers: Len Dawson, Lance Alworth, and Nick Buoniconti. It also reflects the AFL’s two team changes in 1963: the Dallas Texans moved to Kansas City and became the Chiefs, and the New York Titans changed their nickname to the Jets. According to Wikipedia, the Titans were sold in 1963 and moved to Shea Stadium, which is close to LaGuardia Airport, and they hence became the Jets. One of the new owners was Leon Hess, founder of the Hess Corporation. The early Jets colors and logo were made to resemble Hess’s.

1963 marked the end of Fleer’s short run. In 1964, Philadelphia Gum Company obtained the rights to print cards of NFL players, and Topps in turn obtained the rights to the AFL.

• Previous: E is for Error Cards
• Next: G is for Grading
• All of the ABCs

Errors on vintage football cards are common, presumably because the card companies intended the cards for kids, and they did not worry much about quality control. The errors range from incorrect player positions and statistics to reversed images and cards that picture the wrong player.

The most common error on vintage cards is probably misspelling of the player’s name. Pictured here is one example, Brian Piccolo’s 1969 Topps rookie card, which has his name misspelled Bryon on the front and Bryan on the back. Some players’ names were especially problematic: Sonny Jurgensen‘s name is misspelled on at least two cards, and so is Woodley Lewis‘s. Philadelphia Gum misspelled Herb Adderley’s name four years in a row, and Topps also misspelled it once. (How about Bob Hoernschemeyer, you ask? Well, guess what, Bowman got that one right every time!)

People sometimes ask me if error cards are valuable. The answer: usually not. Most errors were not corrected in production, so the error cards are no scarcer than the other cards in the set. (Price guides refer to these as uncorrected errors, abbreviated UER.) If a card company did correct an error in production, one version or the other–the error or the corrected card–can be much scarcer than the other cards in the set, and hence more valuable. Two examples come to mind: First, in the 1955 Topps All-American set, some of Byron White‘s cards were printed with Gaynell Tinsley‘s bio on the back, and some of Tinsley’s were printed with White’s. Topps corrected these errors after production began, and the incorrect versions are scarcer and more valuable than the corrected ones. Second, in the 1957 Topps set, some copies of Will Sherman‘s card have white space where “RAMS” was supposed to go. Topps also corrected this error in production, and the “No Rams” version is scarcer and more valuable than the corrected version.

In regard to pricing, then, the error and corrected versions of a card are really just considered variations of the card. When a card has two variations, some collectors will desire both, and the scarcer one is generally worth more. It’s the same with errors and corrected cards.

Occasionally people send me scans of what they think are error cards, but what they actually have are cards with printing or processing problems: off-centering, double images, print marks, etc. These production flaws are not considered errors, and in most cases they hurt the value of the card. If a production flaw is particularly bad–say the card is miscut so badly that it includes part of the next card–a collector might pay a bit for the novelty, but usually the card will be worth far less than a card without the flaw.

Also, now and then someone will list a card on eBay that has been mislabeled by a grading company, claiming that it is a valuable error. It’s not. At least one grading company makes these so-called “mechanical errors” frequently, and the errors are just a nuisance to get corrected.

As I wrote a while back, the Advanced Search page in the Vintage Football Card Gallery supports searches for error cards. I have most of the major errors identified in the Gallery, and I am gradually adding the minor ones.

• Previous: D is for Defensive Players
• Next: F is for Fleer
• All of the ABCs

Compared to quarterbacks, running backs, receivers, and even kickers, defensive players often got short shrift when the card companies chose the players to put on their cards. The 1968 Topps Stand Up insert set is an extreme example of the bias toward offensive players: in the 22-card set there is only one defensive player, Alex Karras. Even he might not have been included if the 1968 Lions had had an offensive star. Another example, the 1970 Topps Super Glossy set, is somewhat less unbalanced: it contains 25 offensive players, 7 defensive players, and 1 kicker.

Numerous Hall of Fame defensive players were in the league for years before appearing on a card. The most egregious example I can think of is Dick Lane. In 1952, his rookie year with the Rams, Lane had 14 interceptions, an NFL record that still stands–and he did it in 12 games! In 1954 he again led the league in interceptions, with 10, this time with the Cardinals. Despite his performance–and though the Cardinals were hardly flush with stars–Lane first appeared on a 1957 Topps card, and his next appearance was on a 1961 Fleer. (Lane’s biography on Wikipedia–assuming it is accurate–is fascinating. It says his mother found him in a Dumpster!)

Another Hall of Fame defensive player, Len Ford, played for 11 years but appeared on only two cards: his 1955 Bowman rookie card and a 1957 Topps card. He began his career in 1948 with the Los Angeles Dons of the AAFC, and he joined the Browns in 1950 when the AAFC folded and the Browns joined the NFL. No major company printed cards of AAFC players, but Bowman printed cards of NFL players every year from 1950 to 1955, and they finally included Ford in their last year.

At least four Lombardi-era Packers defensive players also made late rookie card appearances: Ray Nitschke began his career in 1958, and his rookie card is a 1963 Topps. Willie Davis also joined the team in 1958, and his rookie card is a 1964 Philadelphia. Herb Adderley joined the team in 1961, and his rookie card is also a 1964 Philadelphia–with his name misspelled, to boot. Willie Wood started in 1960, and his rookie card is a 1963 Topps.

Two Chiefs Hall of Fame defensive backs provide a final example: Willie Lanier joined the Chiefs in 1967, and his rookie card is a 1971 Topps. Emmitt Thomas joined in 1966, and his rookie card is a 1972 Topps.

Occasionally, when it took a while for a defensive player to appear on a card from a major company, the player would appear first on a “pre-rookie” card in a regional or oddball set. All four of the Packers mentioned above had pre-rookie cards in the 1961 Lake to Lake Packers set. Hall of Famers Bob Lilly, Jim Johnson, and Larry Wilson all had pre-rookie cards in the 1962 Post Cereal set. And as I wrote in a previous post, Rams star Ed Meador appeared on 1959 Bell Brand, 1960 Bell Brand, and 1962 Post Cereal cards before his 1963 Topps rookie card was issued. Another long-time Ram, Jack Pardee, whose rookie card is a 1964 Philadelphia, also appeared in the Bell Brand and Post Cereal sets.

Changing the subject a bit, it is worth noting that until 1959, football cards did not distinguish between offensive and defensive positions when there was ambiguity. For example, if a player’s card said “end,” he could have been either a receiver or a defensive end. If it said “back,” he could have been either a running back or a defensive back. Pictured here is an example: Jack Butler was a defensive back, but his 1957 Topps rookie card just says “back.” (This, by the way, is another late rookie card. Butler started his career with the Steelers in 1951.) Perhaps this was a vestige of the time when players played both offense and defense, and a back on offense would also have been a back on defense. Whatever the reason, because of the ambiguity, I probably still have some defensive players listed as offensive players in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. Occasionally a kind person sends me a correction.

• Previous: C is for Checklists
• Next: E is for Error Cards
• All of the ABCs

My old (2005) Beckett football card catalog defines checklist as such:

A card that lists in order the cards and players in the set or series. Older checklist cards in mint condition that have not been checked off are very desirable and command large premiums.

The first football set to include a checklist card was 1956 Topps. That card is shown here, to the right. Except for 1958, every Topps set from 1956 to 1975 includes checklists. (More recent sets undoubtedly do, too, but my collection stops at 1975.) In both 1956 and 1957, the checklist was short-printed and not numbered, but for both years the checklist is considered part of the set.

Topps printed two versions of the 1957 checklist, one with a Bazooka bubble gum ad on the back, and the other with a Twin Blony ad. The Twin Blony checklist is scarcer, but either version of the checklist is considered sufficient to complete the set. Shown here is a 1957 checklist with the Bazooka back.

In 1959 and 1960, rather than printing standalone checklist cards, Topps put a checklist on the back of each team card. Some team cards have a checklist for the first half of the set, and some have a checklist for the second half. Since there is a team card for each team in the league, each checklist appears numerous times in the set. Redundant, yes, but the kids were reasonably assured of getting the checklists.

The second 1961 Topps checklist is unusual: besides listing 1961 Topps cards 78-132, it has a checklist on the back for 36 Cloth Emblem inserts. (See I is for Inserts for a picture of one.) I believe the 36 emblems listed here were distributed with the first series of 1961 Topps cards; they included the NFL teams, the NFL insignia, and some colleges. Twelve more emblems–the AFL teams, AFL insignia, and three more colleges–were released with the second series, but, oddly, Topps did not print a checklist for those. The second series checklist, card number 198, lists just cards 133-198. Perhaps Topps simply did not have enough room on that checklist to include the second series emblems.

Topps checklists from 1962 to 1965 are unremarkable: one or two per set, with a few being short prints. I won’t show them all here, but you can see all of the checklists for all of the sets in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

In 1966, Topps got weird. Included in 1966 football card packs were Funny Rings, insert cards from which you could punch out silly rings to put on your fingers. (You can usually find some on eBay.) The inserts themselves aren’t odd–cards back then were printed for kids, after all–but what is odd is that the checklist for the Funny Rings is card number 15 in the football card set. Nothing on the Funny Ring Checklist has anything to do with football, but since it is a numbered card in the set, collectors are compelled to have it. No problem, except that the checklist has notoriously poor top-to-bottom centering, so it is hard to find in high grade, and hence it is very expensive. (An article by Kevin Glew about the 1966 Topps set describes the poor centering of the checklists and the woes of the men who collect them.)

In 1967, the Topps checklists again were unremarkable. In 1968 and 1969, though, Topps decided to issue a second series checklist with both the first and second series cards. Why? I’m guessing that they included a second series checklist with the first series to entice kids to buy the second series, but they also put one in the second series in case the kids hadn’t bought the first series cards. At any rate, the checklists issued with each series have the characteristics of the other cards in that series, so there are two variations of each second series checklist.

First series 1968 Topps cards have green printing on the back, and second series cards have blue printing, so the second series checklist can be found with either green or blue printing. First series 1969 Topps cards have no border, but second series cards do, so the 1969 second series checklist comes both with and without a border. Shown here are the two variations of the 1969 Topps second series checklist.

I am not aware of any oddities in the Topps checklists from 1970 to 1975, but I do know that Topps printed team checklists in 1973 and 1974, in addition to the regular checklists. These team checklists were not part of the regular sets. I don’t yet have them in the Vintage Football Card Gallery, but you can see examples of the team checklists on eBay.

Now, on to Topps’s competition:

Fleer printed football cards from 1960 to 1963, but only the 1963 Fleer set includes a checklist, and it appears to have been an afterthought. The 1963 Fleers were printed on two sheets, with most players appearing three times between the two sheets. (See my virtual 1963 Fleer uncut sheet for details.) The checklist displaced a Bob Dougherty card on one sheet and a Charles Long card on the other, hence the Dougherty and Long became short prints. The checklist is also a short print, since it appears just twice between the two sheets. Like the 1956 and 1957 Topps checklists, the 1963 Fleer checklist was not numbered, but it is considered part of the set. The borders on the checklist are thin, so high-grade, well-centered examples are rare. The centering of the card shown here is typical.

The Philadelphia Gum Company printed football cards from 1964 to 1967, and they included two checklists in each set. Philadelphia was consistent from year to year: each of the four sets is a single series of 198 cards, and cards 197 and 198 in each set are the checklists. The 1964 Philadelphia checklists are error cards–they both say 1963–and they are typically off-center, like the one shown here. The 1965-1967 Philadelphia checklists are unremarkable and plentiful in high grade.

Having reviewed the checklists, let’s look again at Beckett’s definition. The first part says a checklist lists, in order, the cards in a set or series. That sounds right. But what about the second part, “Older checklist cards in mint condition that have not been checked off are very desirable and command large premiums”? Well, like the claim that the first card and last card in a set are scarcer in high grade (see the discussion on my virtual 1959 Topps uncut sheet page), I think the claim that unchecked checklists command a premium is greatly exaggerated. Sure, kids marked some checklists, but I’ll bet that more went unmarked than were marked. Not all kids bothered to check off their cards, and even when they did, one checklist would have sufficed, and any duplicates would have gone unmarked.

No, I think that if a checklist is scarce in high grade, it is because of other factors, namely short printing or poor centering. The 1956 and 1957 Topps checklists are scarce, but they were short printed. The 1963 Fleer, 1964 Philadelphia, and 1966 Topps checklists are scarce in high grades, but it is because they are usually off-center.

On the other hand, checklists that are not short prints and that are not known for centering problems do not command much of a premium. The 1961 Topps #198 checklist shown here (also the last card in the set) lists for $65-100 in price guides, but a PSA 7 sells for about $20 on eBay. Even generously doubling that $20 to get a retail price puts it well below the “book value.” The 1960 Topps #132 Redskins team (checklist on back, last card in set) lists for $28-30 in the price guides, but a PSA 7 on eBay goes for $8-10. Likewise for the 1965 Philadelphia #197 checklist: it is $30 in the price guides, but about $8-10 on eBay. What’s more, I think the prices realized are actually inflated by the price guides: if the price guides didn’t overprice them, would they sell for as much as they do?

• Previous: B is for Bowman
• Next: D is for Defensive Players
• All of the ABCs

The Bowman Gum Company printed football cards in 1948 and from 1950 to 1955. On the whole, they are my favorite vintage football cards, and if I were to start my collection over, I would focus on collecting these early Bowmans. Except for the 1953 issue, the cards are attractive, varied, and interesting, and eight sets to me is about the right number to work on.

1948 Bowman

The 1948 Bowman cards are small, nearly square, and black-and-white. The cards picture the current players of the time, and since no one had printed football cards since National Chicle in 1935, every card in the 1948 Bowman set is a rookie card. The cards have no printing on the front, only on the back, a format I really like. Every third card–that is, each card with a number divisible by three–is considered a short print. This, says my old Beckett catalog, is because the sheet they were printed on was “printed in much lesser quantities” than the other two sheets. Judging by PSA’s population report, the “lesser” is accurate, but the “much” is not: PSA has graded about third fewer of the short prints, not enough to justify the 4x to 5x premium that Beckett assigns to them.

1950 Bowman

The 1950 Bowmans are the same size as the 1948 cards, and they look like little oil paintings. Like the 1948 cards, they have printing only on the back. 1950 was the year that the All-American Football Conference folded and three of its teams–the Baltimore Colts, Cleveland Browns, and San Francisco 49ers–joined the NFL. Because no major card company had printed cards of AAFC players, several of the stars from the AAFC made their football card debut in the 1950 Bowman set. Of the 10 Hall of Fame players whose rookie cards appear in the 1950 Bowman set, 6 came from the AAFC, and 4 of those 6 played for the Browns.

The Los Angeles Rams were the first team to put a logo on their helmets, and this might be why most of the Rams are wearing helmets on their 1950 Bowman cards. The artist who colored the cards took liberties with the colors, however. On the cards the Rams’ horns appear white in the front and yellow in back, but on the actual helmets the horns did not change color somewhere in the middle.

1951 Bowman

In 1951, Bowman enlarged the cards and put the player’s name and team logo on the front. The logos overwhelm the cards a bit, but logos were more intricate back then, and they needed to be large to show the detail. (See the Lions and Giants logos, for example.) Though attractive, the 1951 set seems to be less popular than the 1950 and 1952 sets, perhaps because it has fewer rookie cards of prominent players.

1952 Bowman Large

In 1952, Bowman released two sets of football cards, identical except for their size. An article in the PSA Library provides a detailed description of the 1952 Large set. In addition to the rookie cards of several Hall of Fame players, the set includes the rookie cards of three Hall of Fame coaches: George Halas, Paul Brown, and Steve Owen. Some cards in the set are challenging to find in high grades: cards with numbers divisible by 9 and the cards immediately following them (i.e., 10, 19, 28, …) are reportedly short prints, and PSA’s population report indicates that some of the other cards (#70, Gene Schroeder, for example) are actually as scarce as the designated short prints.

The PSA article says that the most valuable card in the set is #144, Jim Lansford. The article is correct: the price guides list the card at 2-to-5 times the value of the next most valuable card. Why? Well, the price guides say, not only is the Lansford a short print, but it’s the dreaded last card in the set! This to me is another example of where the guides are off base, since numerous other cards in the set are at least as scarce as the Lansford. (For more “last card” silliness, see my 1959 Topps virtual uncut sheet.)

1952 Bowman Small

The 1952 Bowman Small cards, except for their size, are identical to the Large cards. The PSA library also has an article on this set. It appears that Bowman printed fewer Smalls than Larges, but collectors evidently prefer the large format, because the Larges, in general, command higher prices. Because they fit differently on the sheet, the Smalls do not have the same distribution as the Larges, and no Smalls are designated short prints.

1953 Bowman

Bowman’s follow-up to their classic 1952 sets was the disappointing 1953 Bowman set. In a previous article, I wrote about the ugly white football on the front of the cards, but that’s not the only problem. Outside of the white football, the cards are dark–often too dark to get a good scan–and there is not a single significant rookie card in the set. The card distribution is strange, too: there are 96 cards in the set, and only two of them are Packers.

1954 Bowman

1954 Bowman football cards are the plainest of the old Bowmans, but they are colorful, clear, and attractive. Cards 65-96 were clearly printed in smaller numbers, but my old Beckett has them priced five times higher than the other cards, which is excessive. My favorite is Jim Dooley, in his College All-Star uniform. There is a Whizzer White in the set, but he’s not the Supreme Court justice. There’s an old thread about the Whizzers on the Collectors Universe message board.

1955 Bowman

Finally, there are the 1955 Bowmans. Bowman got experimental again with this set, putting each player on a colored background and giving him an aura. All of the players on a given team have the same colored background: the background for the Packers is yellow, for example, and the background for the Giants is green. I like the uniformity that the background brings to this set. In 1953 and 1954, Bowman put some players on solid color backgrounds, some on geometric backgrounds, and some in front of trees and shrubs.

In 1956, Topps bought Bowman Gum, and Bowman’s run of football cards ended. Now that I think of it, don’t 1956 Topps football cards look like a hybrid of 1955 Bowman and 1955 Topps cards? The 1956 Topps cards have the player on a colored background, with a bit of an aura, and the logo box looks just like the one on the 1955 Topps All-Americans.

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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.

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