Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

Yesterday I added 1926 Shotwell Red Grange Blank Back cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. These cards, which were packaged with “Red Grange” candy bars, picture Grange in scenes from the silent movie “One Minute to Play.” I added the cards to the Food and Regional Issues section of the Gallery.

Jeff Payne kindly provided the images for this set. Thanks, Jeff!

Last week I added 1977 Holsum Bread cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. The set, which was produced for Holsum by Topps, contains only Green Bay Packers and Minnesota Vikings. I filed the cards under Food and Regional Issues. Check ’em out!

Over the weekend I added 1972 O-Pee-Chee CFL football cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. The 1972 O-Pee-Chee cards closely resemble 1972 Topps NFL cards, but they’re somehow even plainer. The images on the O-Pee-Chee cards tend to be dark, also, particularly on the fourteen “Pro Action” cards. According to my Beckett catalog, the Pro Action card pictured here shows Joe Theismann in action. Kind of hard to tell, isn’t it?

As you probably guessed, I put the 1972 O-Pee-Chee set in the Canadian football card category.

Coincidentally, there is currently an uncut sheet of 1972 O-Pee-Chee cards on eBay, as well as an empty wrapper.

This week I added 1924 Lafayette College cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. One of the cards in the set, Charlie Berry, is pictured here. Berry went on to play two seasons for the NFL‘s Pottsville Maroons, and he also played thirteen seasons of major league baseball. Several other players from the 1924 Lafayette team played in the NFL, as well.

For now I put the set in the Food and Regional Issues category of the Gallery, but I think I will create a separate category for college cards when I get a chance.

A big thanks to Carl Lamendola for providing the images for these cards. Carl recently co-authored an article about the Lafayette set; it appears in Issue 41 of Gridiron Greats magazine.

This week I added 1956 Parkhurst Canadian cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery–or most of them, anyway. There are fifty cards in the set, and they are printed on photo stock. The fronts of the cards originally came undeveloped, and the packs included squares of developing paper for revealing the images. You can see an example of the developing paper on eBay.

I didn’t know much about this set before I bought it, and it was a nice surprise to find that it includes the card shown here. The card pictures Cal Jones, the first African-American to win the Outland Trophy. Jones also placed tenth in Heisman Trophy voting in 1955, and this card filled a hole on my page of cards of Heisman candidates. Jones and four other Canadian football players died in a plane crash after the 1956 season. 1956 was Jones’s first year as a pro, and I didn’t know he had appeared on a card. Two of the other crash victims, Mel Becket and Gordon Sturtridge, appear in the set, as well.

This is the eleventh Canadian set I have added to the Gallery; you can see all of them on the Canadian football card page. I will be adding the 1972 O-Pee-Chee CFL set soon.

This week I picked up another piece for my virtual uncut 1965, 1966, and 1967 Philadelphia uncut sheets: the miscut 1966 Philadelphia Steelers team card pictured here. There’s barely enough to tell, but the right side of the shows a little of John David Crow’s card. Here are the two cards together:

I have determined that 1965, 1966, and 1967 Philadelphia uncut sheets all had the same numbering pattern, so the miscut Steelers team card tells me that cards #144 and #175 were together on all three sheets. Those of you who are following my geeky project can see my progress on my Uncut Sheets in Progress page.

I also spotted another card this week that would help me, but it’s part of a large eBay lot, and I’m not quite crazy enough to spend $95 to get it. If you look carefully, you can see a miscut 1967 Brig Owens card in this group of miscellaneous vintage cards. I think the card to its left is John Brodie, but I’m not quite certain. Maybe I can get it if the auction ends without bids.

Yesterday, by looking at some miscut cards, I was able to add a few pieces to my virtual uncut sheet of 1955 Topps All-American football cards. One of the miscuts is pictured here: a Bob Odell card with a bit of Elmer Oliphant’s card showing along the bottom. As I find more of these, I hope to be able to piece together the whole 220-card sheet.

Check out my progress, and if you have any miscut cards that might help the effort, please send them my way.

The newest interactive team card in the Vintage Football Card Gallery is the 1956 Topps Washington Redskins team card. Click on the image pictured here to see the interactive version.

The card pictures the 1955 Redskins team. About fifteen of the players on the card never appeared on cards of their own. While searching for some of the players, I found another, much cooler photo of the 1955 Redskins, with the United States Capitol in the background. Unfortunately, the wide format of the photo wasn’t suited for a football card.

This is my eighth interactive 1956 Topps team card; I have four more to go. Next up: the Pittsburgh Steelers.

This week I added 1979 Cowboys Police cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. The Roger Staubach card is pictured here.

This is the third police set I have added in the past few weeks. You can see the others on the Police Sets page. Next up is the fourth and final 1979 police set, the Los Angeles Rams.

Yesterday I added 1979 Seattle Seahawks Police cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. Along with the 1979 Rams, Cowboys, and Chiefs Police sets, this is the one of the first NFL police sets ever produced. While I was at it, I added a search to the Gallery for members of the Seahawks Ring of Honor. One of the members of the Ring of Honor, defensive back Dave Brown, is pictured here.