December 27th, 2009 |
Published in
Autographs, Interesting Message Board Threads
Back in January I posted an article about an autographed 1963 Fleer Billy Shaw card that I picked up on eBay. Well, one collector has done 80 cards better: he has autographed copies of 81 of the 89 cards in the 1963 Fleer set. Yesterday he posted pictures of all of them on the Collectors Universe message board. Check them out!
I’m not an autograph expert, but the jewel in his set appears to be the checklist, which is in great shape and inscribed by Lance Alworth. (You need to scroll down in his post to see it.) The checklist is the toughest card in the set, because its thin borders make it hard to find well-centered. It is also a short print, as are two other cards in the set. They’re not as short-printed as the price guides indicate, though. See my 1963 Fleer virtual uncut sheet for an explanation.
September 30th, 2009 |
Published in
Autographs, error cards
A common error on vintage football cards was spelling a player’s name Charlie when he spelled it Charley, or spelling it Charley when he spelled it Charlie. I don’t know how the guys named Charles chose which spelling to use, but it appears that the card companies just flipped a coin. And as you can see on the back of the 1966 Philadelphia Charley Taylor card shown here, sometimes they used both!
My Beckett catalog identifies most cards with errors, including Charlie/Charley errors. Unfortunately, it appears that Beckett got some wrong, too. (My catalog is from 2005, but I’ll bet this hasn’t changed.) Charley Johnson’s name, it says, is spelled Charlie, and Charlie King’s name, it says, is spelled Charley. The players’ own signatures, though, show that my Beckett is wrong. Shown here is Charley Johnson’s autograph on a 1967 Philadelphia card and Charlie King’s fascimile signature on his 1969 Tresler Comet Bengals card.
With my Beckett proving unreliable, I turned instead to pro-football-reference.com to help with the Charlie/Charley discrepancies. That site had both Johnson and King correct, and I have found it reliable for all other information, as well.
Following are links to the Charlie/Charley misspellings I have identified in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. It is possible that I missed some, so if you find another, leave a comment or drop me a line.
January 17th, 2009 |
Published in
Autographs, Football Card Trivia, Player Bios
Last Saturday evening I was drinking beer and cruising the web, and I saw this autographed 1963 Fleer Billy Shaw card on eBay. That’s cool, I thought, and the price seemed right, so I hit the Buy-it-Now button. So now I have the beginning of an autograph collection.
This is Billy’s second card, his first being his 1962 Fleer rookie card, a tough one to find in high grade. Billy is the only pro football hall-of-famer to have played only in the AFL. Other AFL players have made it to the hall-of-fame, of course, but each of them also played in the NFL at some time, mostly after the AFL-NFL merger.
My new Shaw card happens to be the version with the red stripe on the bottom on the reverse. 1963 Fleer cards with numbers divisible by four were printed both with and without the stripe, and Shaw is card #28. I don’t have a Shaw without the stripe, unfortunately, but I do have one of each of card #40, Jim Norton, pictured below. Like the purple and blue variations of 1963 Topps cards, the striped vs. non-striped variations of 1963 Fleers are not recognized by Beckett, PSA, or any other football card authority that I am aware of.
