Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

This week I added 1973 Auburn playing cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. One of the cards, picturing Mike Fuller, is shown below. Fuller is one of four players in the deck who later played in the NFL.

The Auburn cards are among several sets of college playing cards that were printed in the early 1970s. See the Gallery’s playing card page for the others I have collected.

This week I added 1975 Fleer Immortal Roll football cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. There are 84 cards in the set, one for each Pro Football Hall of Famer as of 1975, except for Jim Brown. The set includes cards of several early players who, to my knowledge, had not appeared on a card before. Here are two of them, Joe Guyon and Mike Michalske.

Today I added a few more pieces to my partially completed virtual uncut sheet of 1957 Topps football cards. Below are two miscut cards that provided clues: a Dick Bielski card with a bit of Elroy Hirsch showing on the left side, and the back of a Paul Hornung card that shows a sliver of Sid Youngelman’s card along the bottom. You can click on either card to see how the sheet is progressing.

For a full list of the virtual uncut sheets I have assembled, see my article U is for Uncut Sheets. As always, if you happen to have pictures of full sheets, partial sheets, or miscut cards that would help the effort, please send me an email.

This week I added 1971 O-Pee-Chee CFL football cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. One thing I enjoyed about adding the cards was finding a few players who had also played in the NFL or AFL, but who did not appear on NFL or AFL cards. One of them, Dave Raimey, is pictured here. Raimey played for the Cleveland Browns in 1964, then he played ten seasons in the CFL and made the Canadian Football Hall of Fame.

In the notes for the 1971 O-Pee-Chee cards, I identified all of the players who also played in the NFL or AFL. I also marked the players who are members of the Canadian Hall of Fame. Check ‘em out!

Yesterday I showed you some miscut 1967 Topps cards that I picked up at the National; today I have a handful of 1961 Topps cards. I hope to collect enough of these to determine what uncut sheets of 1961 Topps cards looked like. I have not seen an uncut sheet, partial sheet, panel, or strip of 1961 Topps cards, so I am starting from scratch with this set. To see what I have so far, check out my 1961 Topps virtual uncut sheet page. As always, if you have miscut cards that would help the project, I would love to see them.

Last week, at the National Sports Collectors Conference, I picked up two badly miscut 1967 Topps football cards that will help me determine what an uncut sheet looked like. Here they are: a Johnny Robinson card with a bit of Wahoo McDaniel on the left, and a Jim Hunt card with a bit of Johnny Robinson on the left. You can see the pieces of the sheet I have so far on my virtual 1967 Topps uncut sheet page.

For a full list of the virtual uncut sheets I have assembled, see my previous blog article, U is for Uncut Sheets. If you happen to have pictures of full sheets, partial sheets, or miscut cards that would help the effort, I’d love to see them!

Yesterday I added 1976 Crane Discs to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. The Crane Potato Chip Company was based in Decatur, Illinois, and most of the discs picture players from NFL teams in the Midwest. See my Gallery page for the discs for details. I filed the discs under “Oddball.”

I recently added 1961 Topps Flocked Stickers to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. The stickers, which represent NFL, AFL, and major college teams, were inserts in packs of 1961 Topps football cards. See my Gallery page for the stickers for a description of the set.

Yesterday I added 1976 Popsicle football cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. I included a short description of the set with the images, so I won’t describe them here. Check out the card for your favorite team–do you recognize the players in the action photo?

I filed the Popsicle cards under Food and Regional Issues.

Awhile back, on the Pro Football Hall of Fame web site, I found a list of brothers who played pro football. I thought it was interesting, so I marked all of the players in the Vintage Football Card Gallery whose brothers had also played professionally. In many cases, only one brother appeared on a card, and it was fun to give the cardless brothers a nod. Did you know, for instance, that Terry Bradshaw’s brother Craig played a season for the Houston Oilers?

In the Hall of Fame’s list, the brothers who were teammates during their pro careers are marked with a diamond. Seeing these made me wonder how many brothers appeared on the same team in the same set of football cards. I did a quick check, and these are the ones I found in the Gallery:

Brothers Knox and Garrard (“Buster”) Ramsey were teammates with the Chicago Cardinals in 1950 and 1951. They both appeared with the Cardinals on 1951 Bowman cards.

Ebert and Steve Van Buren were teammates with the Philadelphia Eagles in 1951, and they both appeared on 1951 Bowman football cards.

Phil and Merlin Olsen were teammates with the Los Angeles Rams from 1971 to 1974. They appeared together on 1972 Sunoco Stamps and 1973 Topps football cards.


Tody and Bubba Smith were teammates with the Houston Oilers in 1975 and 1976, and they both appeared with the Oilers in the 1976 Topps set.

Finally, just missing the cut are brothers Mel and Miller Farr, who were teammates for the Detroit Lions in 1973. Both of them appeared on 1973 Topps cards, but Miller was not traded to the Lions until September, so Topps still had him with the St. Louis Cardinals.

Once upon a time, long, long ago, I bought a set of 1972 Sunoco Stamps, and I started adding them to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. I said at the time that it would take me months to take pictures of all the stamps, and it did: 30 months, to be precise. I finally scanned and uploaded the last of them yesterday–all but one, that is. I discovered yesterday that I have two Verlon Biggs stamps, but no Ron McDole stamp. Anyone have a picture of a McDole they can send me?

As I was scanning the stamps yesterday, I noted one thing I like about them: the images on them aren’t airbrushed. In 1972, Topps was still airbrushing logos off helmets and airbrushing new uniforms onto players–badly–but the Sunoco stamps show the players in the uniforms of their current teams, logos intact. I especially like seeing old helmets, and for most teams there’s at least one stamp with a good picture of the team’s helmet. Below are a few examples.

Now, on to the 82-stamp update set!

Last week I added 1969 New Orleans Saints Doubloons to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. These are the first coins I have added to the Gallery, and I filed them under Oddball. As usual with team sets, this set contains a few players who never appeared on regular issue football cards. That is my favorite feature of team sets: seeing players I have not seen before.

Doubloons are common souvenirs in New Orleans, and the Saints have been commemorated on other doubloons, as well. One example I found online is a series of doubloons showing the Saints’ 1967-1975 schedules, sponsored by Falstaff beer. Another set of doubloons, sponsored by Jax beer, contains a coin for each 1967 home game. You can see an example of that set on eBay.

Today I added 1926 Shotwell Red Grange Ad Back cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. These cards, which all picture Red Grange, were one of two series included in 1926 Shotwell Red Grange candy bars. (The other series, which is blank-backed, pictures Grange in scenes from the movie One Minute to Play.) The cards are slightly smaller than standard cards, and they are printed on thin, fragile paper. A huge thanks to MSB Sports Cards for the images for this set.

Though it is not mentioned on the Shotwell cards, Grange co-founded the 9-team American Football League in 1926, and he played for the league’s New York Yankees that year. The AFL survived only one season, unfortunately. Grange and the Yankees moved to the NFL in 1927, but the Yankees lasted only two seasons in the NFL before folding.

Last year, after looking at a number of badly miscut cards, I concluded that uncut sheets of 1965, 1966, and 1967 Philadelphia football cards all had the same numbering scheme. So, from a picture of a half-sheet of 1966 Philadelphia cards, I was able to construct virtual half-sheets of 1965 and 1967 Philadelphia cards, as well. Unfortunately, I have not seen an example of the other half-sheet from any of the three sets, but I have been slowly piecing one together by looking at more miscut cards. Last weekend I added a few more pieces, and the second half-sheet took more shape. One of the new pieces is shown here: it’s a miscut 1966 Atlanta Falcons card that has a tiny piece of a Don Perkins card in the lower left corner.

To see my progress on the second half-sheet, go to the Uncut Sheets in Progress page and scroll down to the bottom. For a full list of my virtual uncut sheets, see a previous blog article, U is for Uncut Sheets.

This week I added 1962 Topps CFL cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. There are 169 cards in the set, about 21 per team. Most Topps sets contain about 10-12 cards per team, so many of the players in the 1962 CFL set were making their first appearance on a card.

As usual with non-NFL sets, I enjoyed finding players who had played in the NFL but who had not appeared on cards for their NFL teams. Pictured here are three of the those players: Hal Ledyard played for the 49ers in 1953, Chuck Quilter played for the 49ers in 1949 and 1950, and George Scott played for the Giants in 1959. I identified a few other ex-NFL players, as well; just browse the set to see them.