First, the image of Bart Starr on the Green Bay Packers Mini-Card Album appeared in the inset of Starr’s 1962 Topps card.

Next, the image of John Unitas on the Baltimore Colts Mini-Card Album was also used in the inset photo of Zeke Bratkowski’s 1962 Topps card. Topps changed Unitas’s number 19 to Bratkowski’s number 12 on the 1962 Topps card, as I noted in an earlier article.

The image on the Minnesota Vikings Mini-Card Album also appeared in the inset photo of Don Perkins’s 1962 Topps card, but the player’s number is different. I’m guessing that the image was altered for the 1962 card, so the player probably isn’t Perkins.

The image on the Denver Broncos Mini-Card Album is the same one used in the inset photo on Ollie Matson’s 1962 Topps card, but again, the player’s number is different. Matson was number 33 with the Rams, so it appears that the image on his 1962 card was altered. Does anyone recognize the player?

Finally, the image on the Washington Redskins Mini-Card Album is the same as the inset on John Aveni’s 1962 Topps card. Again, the player’s number appears to have been changed on the 1962 Topps card. I believe that the player is Dick James, who wore number 47 for the Redskins in 1961.

Given that there are so many altered jersey numbers on the 1962 Topps cards, I wonder how many of the inset photos actually picture the right player. Not many, I’ll bet.

Reading the commentary in the long page of photos, I learned that McMillin’s name is misspelled on both his 1955 Topps All-American card and his 1926 Spalding Champions card. It is spelled correctly in my Beckett price guides, but the cards are not noted as errors, so the errors were news to me. I also learned from the photo page that the image on McMillin’s 1926 Spalding card is not McMillin, but another player. If you put the card next to one of his other photos, it is clear that the Spalding card pictures someone else. Does anyone recognize the impostor?

Having learned about the mistakes, I fixed the spelling of McMillin’s name on my two web sites, noted the errors on his individual cards, and added his 1926 Spalding card to my page of football cards that picture the wrong player. Whew!

Rick Duncan, a kicker and punter, played in four games over three seasons for the Broncos, Eagles, and Lions. He had been out of football for two years by the time he showed up on Young’s card. Topps apparently used a photo of Duncan from 1968, because he is pictured in an Eagles uniform, and 1968 was the season he spent with the Eagles. He evidently had a tryout with the Bears in 1967, because I found a press photo of him and Bruce Alford in Bears uniforms.

Adrian Young, a linebacker, played for six seasons with the Eagles, Lions, and Bears. I found two items that picture the real Adrian Young: a 1969 Eagles team issue photo and a 1972 NFLPA stamp. (Young is in the bottom row, second from the right.) I’d say there’s not much resemblance between Young and Duncan.

Coincidentally, while searching for a photo of Young, I learned that he will be inducted into the USC Athletic Hall of Fame in 2012. I also found an article that says he once intercepted four passes in a game against Notre Dame. Unfortuately, the article uses the image from Young’s 1971 Topps card–the one that pictures Rick Duncan!

For more vintage football cards that picture the wrong player, see my Mistaken Identities page and my blog article about errors in the inset photos on 1962 Topps football cards.

The other four players in the set–Frank Varrichione, Will Renfro, Jimmy Orr, and Joe Lewis–were with either Cleveland or Pittsburgh the previous season. It appears that Kahn’s intended to make the set all Browns and Steelers, but these players moved, so Kahn’s simply changed the teams on the backs of their cards.

Two of the cards in the set, Tom Tracy and Larry Krutko, have their images swapped. This is especially unfortunate for Krutko, because I believe that this is his only football card. (For more old football cards that picture the wrong player, see my Mistaken Identities page.)

The set includes a pre-rookie card of Gene Hickerson. Hickerson had more pre-rookie cards than any other Hall of Famer I can think of: he appeared in the 1959 through 1962 Kahn’s sets, and on a 1962 Post Cereal card.

Thanks again to Mike Ford, who provided images for several of the Kahn’s sets.

• First up is a 1949 Silber’s Bakery card of Dick Barwegan, from the AAFC’s Baltimore Colts. (His name is misspelled on the card.) This is one of the few Silber’s cards I have seen for sale. The set also includes a Y.A. Tittle pre-rookie card, which I wrote about in an earlier article.
• wwwprpsportscom is selling a bunch of individual 1959 Bell Brand Rams cards, another tough regional set, .
• The pre-rookie card of the week is a 1948 Kellogg’s Pep Lou Groza card. (Groza’s rookie card is a beautiful 1950 Bowman.)
• Here are a couple of sharp 1951 Berk Ross “doubles,” cards that were not separated at the perforations. As you can see, this was a multi-sport set.
• Holey Bronco Nagurski rookie card!
• This week’s crinkled 1960 Kahn’s Jim Brown card looks a lot like last week’s crinkled 1960 Kahn’s Jim Brown card, but the price has gone up.
• Another very tough regional card: a 1969 Fairmont Dairy Len Dawson card, still on the milk carton. You can see many more Fairmont Dairy Chiefs cards and information about them on the net54 message board.
• Here’s a full set of 1956 Parkhurst CFL cards. The 1956 Parkhursts came undeveloped, and you rubbed a special piece of paper on them to develop them. There is also an undeveloped Bud Grant card on eBay, as well as a square of the special paper.
• Finally, the oddball item of the week: a full set of 1967 New Orleans Saints Doubloons!

There are several other reversed images in the Gallery: Charley Trippi on one variation of his 1948 Kellogg’s Pep card; Bill Wade, Doug Atkins, and Frank Varrichione on their 1960 Topps cards, and Dick Butkus and Joe Namath on variations of their 1972 NFLPA Vinyl Stickers.

Though I don’t often look at the cartoons, this is the second big error I have found in a cartoon on a Topps card. The other was on Homer Jones’s 1968 Topps card, which said that “Homer Defeated the Russians in the 1960 Olympics.” As I wrote in an earlier blog post, Jones never competed in the Olympics.

So now I’m skeptical: Did Butch Byrd really love to read detective stories in his spare time? Did Roy Jefferson really dabble in investments after football season? Did Ron McDole really play paddle-racquets to stay in condition? I’ll check my facts before quoting the cartoonist!

There are twenty players in the set of stickers, with two variations. The Joe Namath and Dick Butkus stickers each come two ways: with a reversed image of the player’s head, and with the player’s head oriented correctly. To guess which stickers had the reversed images, I compared them to the images on 1972 NFLPA Iron Ons.

I can’t say I am fond of these stickers. The big-real-head-on-little-cartoon-body design also appears on other cards–1938 Goudey baseball cards, for example–and I have always found it a bit creepy. Also, the stickers don’t include the players’ teams, and some don’t even have the players in the correct team colors. Paul Warfield in green and John Brockington in purple? That must have alarmed young Dolphins and Packers fans!

For more oddball football cards and collectibles, see the Oddball page of the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

As I usually do when I write about a player, I did a little web search for Lewis, and I turned up a couple of nice non-card images. One, on the University of Oregon web site, pictures him in the middle of a broad jump. Another, on flickr, shows him in front of the Sportsman Bowl, a bowling alley that he owned after retiring from football. I also found an old matchbook for Woodley Lewis’s Sportsman Bowl on eBay.