Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

Today I added a big stack of PSA-graded 1960′s cards to Nearmint’s Vintage Football Cards. Included is this one, a 1962 Fleer Gene Mingo card. Mingo was a running back, kicker, and kick returner for the Broncos. He was the first African-American kicker in professional football, and he had a kick return for a touchdown in the first AFL game. He led the league in scoring in 1960 and 1962, and he still holds the Broncos’ team record for longest run from scrimmage, 82 yards against the Raiders in 1962. Oddly, he is not a member of the Broncos’ Ring-of-Fame.

You can see all of Gene Mingo’s cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

I put some nice PSA-graded 1940s and 1950s cards up for sale today, mostly 1955 Bowmans, but a few other beauties as well.
Pictured here is a gorgeous 1952 Bowman Small Sammy Baugh card. After Sammy died in December, I learned about all his records: most seasons leading the league in passing (6), highest average punting average for a season (51.4 yards), first player to intercept four passes in a game, and so on. It reminded me to re-read an article I had found on ColdHardFootballFacts.com, The All-Time 11. In the article, the ColdHard guys named the 11 players from NFL history that they would choose if they could have only 11 players on the team. Each player would have to play every down: on offense, defense, and special teams. Check out the article, but before you do, can you guess the player they chose who played in this millennium?

Today I added a big stack of sharp ungraded 1972 Topps cards to my sales site. Here is one of them: an unflattering photo of John Unitas fumbling in the 1971 AFC Championship. Unitas and Earl Morrall combined for 10 TD passes and 21 interceptions in 1971, and the team still finished 10-4!

I hadn’t realized it, but the 1972 Topps set features the rookie cards of eight hall-of-fame players: John Riggins, Ted Hendricks, Ron Yary, Gene Upshaw, Roger Staubach, Larry Little, Charlie Joiner, and Rayfield Wright. You can see all of them here in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. (To see the rookie cards in any set in the gallery, use the address http://www.footballcardgallery.com/set/year+company/hof/1/rookie/1/. For example, the address for the 1972 set is http://www.footballcardgallery.com/set/1972+Topps/hof/1/rookie/1/.)

I added a big stack of ungraded 1963 Topps football cards to my sales site today, including most of the short prints. This is an interesting and challenging set to collect: the colored borders readily show wear, many of the cards are short-printed, and some of the short-printed cards are practically always off-center. Assembling the set in high grade is tough!

The set includes the rookie cards of several hall-of-famers: Bob Lilly, Ray Nitschke, Larry Wilson, Willie Wood, and Deacon Jones. You can see the entire array of 1963 Topps rookie cards in my vintage football card gallery.

The set also contains a variation that the price guides and grading services don’t recognize. Some of the player cards have a purple background, and some have a blue background. An example of each is shown below. A web site called At the Half has a nice article about the variation.