Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

Today I identified the members of the Kansas City Chiefs Hall of Fame in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. To search for them, go to the Advanced Search page and pick Chiefs Hall of Fame in one of the Honor menus.

The Chiefs Hall of Fame is interesting. Rather than inducting a group of players in an inaugural class, the team inducted one person in 1970 and one person each year since–except for 1983, when they did not induct anyone. (I don’t know why they skipped 1983. Does anyone else?) The first person inducted was Lamar Hunt, one of the eight founders of the American Football League and the first owner of the Dallas Texans. Hunt moved the Texans to Kansas City in 1963 and renamed them the Chiefs.

The second person inducted was Mack Lee Hill, a running back who died after knee surgery after a game in his second season. Hill was a good player, but clearly he was inducted because he had passed away unexpectedly while with the team.

Jerry Mays was the first person inducted for years of outstanding play. His rookie card, a 1962 Fleer, is pictured here. Mays played ten seasons with the Texans and Chiefs, and he was selected for the All-AFL team in seven of those seasons. He was inducted into the Chiefs Hall of Fame just two years after retiring.

You can see the full list of Chiefs Hall of Fame inductees on the Chiefs web site.

Yesterday I added the ability to search the Vintage Football Card Gallery for members of the Atlanta Falcons Ring of Honor. The Falcons established the Ring in 2004; you can see all of the inductees on the Falcons web site.

Atlanta entered the league in 1966, and the Gallery contains cards only up to 1976, so I have cards for only three Ring of Honor members: Claude Humphrey, Tommy Nobis, and Jeff Van Note. They are pictured here on their 1972 Sunoco Stamps.

What’s remarkable about these three players is the amount of time they were with the team. Humphrey played 14 seasons in the NFL, 11 of them with the Falcons. Nobis played 11 seasons, all with the Falcons. And Van Note played 17 seasons, all with the Falcons! None of the three has yet been elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, though Humphrey has been a finalist four times. I would like to see one of the old-timers get in before Deion Sanders, who was inducted into the Ring of Honor in 2010. Sanders spent just 5 of his 14 NFL seasons with the Falcons.

I am slowly identifying the members of all of the individual teams’ Halls of Fame in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. You can see the others I have finished on the Advanced Search page.

Today I added the ability to search the Vintage Football Card Gallery for members of the Philadelphia Eagles Honor Roll. I found the list of Honor Roll inductees, along with summaries of their careers, in the Eagles media guide. As I have written in earlier posts, I like looking at team halls of fame because they include the second tier of stars, the ones who have not made it into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

One name on the Eagles Honor Roll surprised me: Ollie Matson. I didn’t know that he had been an Eagle! So I looked up his stats and found that he had played for Philadelphia from 1964 to 1966, his last three seasons before retiring. He didn’t appear on a football card during those years, I suppose because his production had waned by then. According to Wikipedia, when the Eagles introduced their Honor Roll in 1987, they inducted all former Eagles who were members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. So they included Matson, though his best years had been with the Cardinals and Rams.

Another member of the Eagles Honor Roll inaugural class, Harold Carmichael, is pictured above. This is Carmichael’s rookie card, a 1974 Topps.

You can use the Gallery’s Advanced Search page to find cards of members of the Eagles Honor Roll or other team halls of fame.

The New York Giants introduced their Ring of Honor at New Meadowlands Stadium early this month. The inaugural class included twenty-two players, plus eight coaches, owners, and executives. You can see the full list of inductees on the Giants’ Wikipedia page. (You can also see the full list on the Giants’ web site, but beware: the page automatically starts a video, and it’s kind of startling.)

Thirteen of the inductees appear as individuals on cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. You can search for them by choosing “Giants Ring of Honor” in one of the “Honor” menus on the Advanced Search page. At least one more inductee, coach Jim Lee Howell, does not appear on a card of his own, but you can find him on some of the team cards–see him on my interactive 1959 Topps Giants team card, for example.

Two of the inductees, Dick Lynch and Joe Morrison, first appeared on cards in the 1962 Post Cereal set, a minor issue. Their cards are pictured here. (For a description of the Post set, see W is for Wonder Bread–and Other Food Issues.) Lynch’s first card in a major issue–in other words, his rookie card–is a 1964 Philadelphia, and Morrison’s is a 1965 Philadelphia. Despite being stars, both players spent seven years in the league before appearing in a major set.

For more early Giants cards, matchbooks, etc., also check out revmoran’s Giants Football Cards page on the Giants web site. It’s great stuff!

I recently added the ability to search the Vintage Football Card Gallery for members of the Miami Dolphins Honor Roll. According to Wikipedia, “The Miami Dolphin Honor Roll is a ring around the second tier at Sun Life Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida, which honors former players, coaches, contributors, and officials who have made significant contributions to the Miami Dolphins franchise.” The Wikipedia article includes a list of inductees and a picture of the ring. Oddly, I couldn’t find a reference to the Honor Roll on either the Sun Life Stadium web site or the Dolphins official site. Perhaps it’s a user problem.

Pictured here is one member of the Honor Roll, Dick Anderson, on his 1969 Topps rookie card. Anderson once intercepted four passes in a game, an NFL record he shares with seventeen other players.

To search for players in other teams’ Rings and Halls of Fame and Honor, see the Gallery’s Advanced Search page.

This morning I added the ability to search the Vintage Football Card Gallery for members of the Dallas Cowboys Ring of Honor. Just go to the Advanced Search page, choose Cowboys Ring of Honor in one of the “Honor” menus, and hit the Search button.

Pictured here is one member of the Ring, Don Perkins, on his 1962 Topps rookie card. He’s wearing the Cowboys’ first home jersey, my all-time favorite over all the NFL teams. He doesn’t appear to be wearing it in the black-and-white inset photo, though, so I wonder if that is a college photo. Or maybe it’s not even him: on some 1962 cards, Topps pictured a different player in the inset photo, sometimes altering the image to look like the player on the card. For examples of that, see my earlier blog article on the subject.

Looking through the cards I have of members of the Cowboys Ring of Honor, it’s striking that there are no cards of players who had moved on to different teams. It is possible that I don’t have all of the players’ cards, but the impression I get is that the Cowboys’ best players stayed with the Cowboys.

I am continuing to identify players in the Vintage Football Card Gallery who have been honored by the individual teams. Today I added the members of the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame. There were a lot of members to add!

Pictured here is one of them, Tobin Rote, on his 1950 Bowman rookie card. I learned today that in 1956, Rote led the league in passing yards and passing touchdowns, led the Packers in rushing, and finished second in the league in rushing touchdowns.

You can use the Advanced Search page of the Gallery to find members of the Packers Hall of Fame and recipients of other honors.

Earlier this week I enhanced the Vintage Football Card Gallery to let you find the cards of players and coaches who received various honors, such as membership in the Denver Broncos Ring of Fame. Now, for each such honor, I just have to add the honorees to my database. Over the past couple of days I added the members of the Washington Redskins Ring of Fame and the Minnesota Vikings Ring of Honor. The exercise has been interesting: I am familiar with most players who have made the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and now I am learning who was in the next level of great players for each team.

Pictured here are the rookie cards of two players I added to my honors database this week. The first is a 1964 Philadelphia card of Bill Brown, a member of the Vikings Ring of Honor, and the second is a 1955 Bowman card of Gene Brito, a member of the Redskins Ring of Fame. To see the other honors I’ve done so far–and to do more complex searches–see the Advanced Search page of the Gallery.

This week I enhanced the Vintage Football Card Gallery so that I can easily add searches for players who received various honors. Prior to the enhancement, you could search only for Hall of Fame members and Heisman Trophy winners. With the enhancement (and after I do some data entry), you can search for cards of College Hall of Famers, Most Valuable Players, members of each team’s hall of fame, and so on.

To test the enhancements, I added searches for CFL Hall of Famers, Broncos Ring of Famers, and members of the new Jets Ring of Honor. Over time, I will add the recipients of other awards, as well.

The change appears in two places. The first place is the Advanced Search page, which now has drop-down menus containing all of the various honors. You can pick up to three honors, and the search will find the players who received all of the honors you chose.

The second place the change appears is the search results page. That page now has a column that lists each player’s honors, regardless of the search you did.

Try it out! If you have any requests–or if you find a bug–let me know.

Earlier this week, Les Richter and Chris Hanburger were named the 2011 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.

Richter’s two rookie cards are a 1952 Bowman Large and a 1952 Bowman Small, issued the year he graduated from the University of California. (The 1952 Bowman Small is pictured here.) He served in the Army for two years after graduating, and he joined the Rams in 1954. Richter played for the Rams from 1954 to 1962, and he appeared on at least one football card in each year of his career–unusual for a defensive player. He passed away earlier this year.

Hanburger’s rookie card is a 1967 Philadelphia, issued in the third year of his career. After that, he appeared on at least one card or stamp each year until he retired after the 1976 season.

Judging by recent history, it is likely that at least one of the two senior nominees will be elected to the Hall. The Hall of Fame’s senior nominees page shows that at least one senior candidate has been elected each year since 1998. Since 2004, when the senior committee began nominating two players per year, 11 of the 14 nominees have been elected. One nominee, Bob Hayes, was not elected in 2004, but he was nominated again in 2009 and elected that year.

You can see all of Les Richter’s cards and all of Chris Hanburger’s cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

The New York Jets announced yesterday that their new stadium, New Meadowlands Stadium, will include a Jets Ring of Honor. The Jets chose five former players and a former coach as the first inductees. Here are the inductees, along with information on their cards:

• Weeb Ewbank – Ewbank coached the Jets from 1963 to 1973; before that he coached the Baltimore Colts from 1954 to 1962. I don’t believe Ewbank appeared by himself on a card in his coaching days, but he did appear on some of the Colts team cards (he’s named on the 1956 Topps card), and probably on the 1964 Topps Jets team card–if Topps didn’t use an old photo. It’s usually hard to pick out coaches on team cards, unfortunately, since the coaches don’t wear numbers. Ewbank did appear on some cards in tribute sets in the 1980s and later, though. You can find a lot of the tribute cards on eBay.
• Winston Hill – Hill’s rookie card is the 1965 Topps card pictured here, and he also appeared on a bunch of cards after that. You can see most of Hill’s cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.
• Joe Klecko – Klecko’s rookie card is a 1978 Topps, and he appeared on a lot of cards in the 80s. As I wrote in an earlier post, I once bought a bunch of his rookie cards from Teletrade, and I sold them recently for next to nothing. Will they jump in price now that he’s in the Ring of Honor? Probably not. You can find most of Klecko’s cards on eBay.
• Curtis Martin – Martin appeared on a billion cards between 1995 and 2006. I don’t handle modern cards, so I’m afraid I can’t say much about them. You can find a nice selection on eBay.



• Don Maynard – Maynard has two rookie cards, a 1961 Topps (pictured here) and a 1961 Fleer, and he appeared on cards every year through his last season, 1973. (His 1973 Topps card has him still with the Jets, but he played for the Cardinals that season.) You can see most of Maynard’s cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.
• Joe Namath – Namath’s rookie card, a 1965 Topps, is one of the most familiar cards in the hobby. (See J is for Joe Namath–and the 1965 Topps Tall Boys.) From 1965 to 1973, he appeared on numerous regular issue cards, oddballs, and inserts. Oddly, though he was still playing, he did not appear on any cards from 1974 to 1977. After he retired, he appeared on cards in a lot of tribute sets. You can see most of Namath’s cards from his playing days in the Vintage Football Card Gallery, and a lot of the rest on eBay.

Earlier this week, I listed the six members of the College Football Hall of Fame 2010 Divisional Class, who will be enshrined this weekend. They will be enshrined along with the eighteen members of the 2009 Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division 1-A) Class. You can see the full list of twenty-four enshrinees on the College Hall of Fame web site.

The split between the Divisional Class and the Bowl Subdivision Class is a little confusing, since classes from different years are being enshrined together. Compounding the confusion, the 2010 Bowl Subdivision Class has already been chosen–before the 2009 class has been enshrined! The 2010 Bowl Subdivision Class, which was announced on May 27, 2010, will be inducted on December 7, 2010, and enshrined in 2011–together with the 2011 Divisional Class. In the meantime, the Hall of Fame itself is moving from South Bend to Atlanta, for more exposure. I suppose all of the annual events–two class announcements, two induction ceremonies, and the two-day enshrinement festival–are meant to maximize exposure, too.

At any rate, only one member of the 2009 Bowl Subdivision class appears on vintage cards. That’s Pervis Atkins, whose rookie card, a 1964 Philadelphia, is pictured here. Atkins played for six seasons with the Rams, Redskins, and Raiders. He also appeared on a 1965 Philadelphia card with the Redskins.

Here are the eighteen members of the 2009 Bowl Subdivision Class, along with some information on their cards. I don’t have many modern cards, so most of the links lead to examples on eBay.

In my previous post, I mentioned that Milt Morin will be enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame on July 17. Five other players and coaches from the 2010 Divisional Class will be enshrined, as well. (They will join eighteen players and coaches from the 2009 Bowl Subdivision–formerly Division 1-A–Class.) Here are all six 2010 Divisional Class inductees, along with what I know about their cards.

• Emerson Boozer – Boozer appeared on Topps cards from 1970-1975, and on a 1972 Sunoco Stamp. You can see all of them in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. His 1970 Topps card is shown here.
• Troy Brown – Brown is the youngest of the class of 2010, and he appeared on a boatload of modern New England Patriots cards. You can see lots of them on eBay.
• Willie Jeffries – Jeffries coached at three schools, and as far as I know, he did not appear on a card. There aren’t many cards of college coaches, unfortunately.
• Brian Kelley – Kelley’s first card is a 1976 Topps, which I don’t yet have in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. He appeared on numerous Topps cards between 1976 and 1984, and you can find most or all of them on eBay.
• Ted Kessinger – Kessinger was also a coach, and I don’t believe he appeared on any cards.
• Milt Morin – Morin appeared on several early 1970s cards. You can see all of them in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

See the College Football Hall of Fame web site for bios of all of the 2010 Divisional Class inductees.

Two Canadian Football League Hall of Famers, Ron Atchison and Frank Rigney, passed away this week. Both players appeared on numerous CFL football cards. I am not an expert on CFL cards (or on the CFL, for that matter), so I took the opportunity to do some web searching and learn a little.

A tribute to Ron Atchison on the Vancouver Sun web site says that he walked-on to the Saskatchewan training camp in 1952, and he ended up playing on the Roughriders defensive line for seventeen years. In that span, the team won one Grey Cup (CFL Championship), in 1966. In one playoff game on an icy field, the resourceful Atchison wore his Hush Puppies for better traction–and they worked!

Atchison apparently did not play college football, but prior to trying out with Saskatchewan, he played for the Saskatoon Hilltops in the Canadian Junior Football League. The league is still in operation, and, according to its Wikipedia page, it serves as a sort of minor league for the CFL. There are some fun team names among the league’s current nineteen teams, including the Big Kahuna Rams, the Chilliwack Huskers, the London Beefeaters, and the Windsor AKO Fratmen.

The card pictured here is Atchison’s 1965 Topps CFL card. 1965 Topps is probably my favorite CFL set, since the cards are colorful and distinct from their NFL counterparts. (Some CFL cards, such as 1958 Topps, 1962 Post, and 1968 O-Pee-Chee, look just like the NFL cards from those years, so to me they’re not very interesting.) Atchison appeared on many more cards, and although I don’t yet have them, you can see a nice assortment on eBay.

Like Atchison, Frank Rigney spent his entire CFL career with the same team, playing ten years on the Winnipeg Blue Bombers offensive line. In those ten years, Winnipeg played in five Grey Cups and won four of them. Rigney was a CFL West All Star in seven of his ten seasons. He played college football for Iowa, and he was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles, but I did not find anything that said he reported to the Eagles training camp.

Pictured here is Rigney’s 1962 Topps CFL card, half of a panel he shared with teammate Gordie Rowland. The two-card panels in this set are the size of standard single cards. Rigney appeared on many more cards, as well as on some Nalley’s Coins, and you can see examples of them on eBay.

Rigney’s obituary on the CBC News web site provides a nice summary of his career.

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.

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