Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

Yesterday I added 1948 Kellogg’s Pep football cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. The five cards are part of a 42-card sport and entertainment set that was distributed in boxes of Kellogg’s Pep cereal. You can see the composition of the set on PSA’s web site, but you have to look in two places, since PSA split the set into athletes and celebrities. Apparently not many trading card sets contain both.

The cards are small, about half the height of a standard trading card. There is one variation among the football cards: some instances of Charley Trippi’s card have the image reversed, and some have it corrected. The Trippi card shown here has the reversed image, though I’m not sure how to tell. Perhaps by how his chinstrap is fastened?

Trippi’s card shows him in his College All-Star uniform–note the stars on the shoulders. He played in the game five times: four as a college all-star, and one as a Chicago Cardinal, after the Cardinals won the 1947 NFL championship. The College All-Star Game site has a photo of Trippi in action in 1945, the year he was the All-Stars’ MVP.

Another notable card in the 1948 Pep set is a Lou Groza pre-rookie card, pictured here. Groza’s rookie card is a 1950 Bowman. Check out my pre-rookie card page for more pre-rookies.

There is currently an empty Kellogg’s Pep box for sale on eBay that shows some of the 1948 cards on the front. If you squint, you can see some of the football cards listed on one of the side panels. The box, which the seller says is the first cereal box to show a sports figure on the front (namely, George Mikan), is listed for a mere $2599.

• Search eBay for: 1948 Kellogg’s Pep cards
• Search Nearmint’s Cards for: Charley Trippi, Lou Groza

I was looking through some 1968 and 1969 Topps football cards yesterday, and the Steelers’ “Batman” jerseys caught my eye. Looking at the Steelers cards together, I wondered if the Batman jersey photos had all been taken in the same session. It’s possible: I did some Googling and found that the Steelers wore the jerseys for only a season and a half, from the middle of the 1966 season to the end of 1967. My guess is that the photos were all taken before the 1967 season.

An article on team’s web site recounts the full story, but the gist is that, in the midst of the 1966 season, the Steelers decided they wanted their uniforms to be more distinctive. To achieve this, they incorporated a “golden triangle” into their jerseys. This was meant to represent Pittsburgh’s downtown, called the Golden Triangle because it sits between two rivers that give it a triangular shape. (A nice photo I found on Wikipedia shows the triangle.) According to Wikipedia, the players didn’t like the uniforms, because they thought the jerseys looked like Batman’s bat-suit. In 1968, the team reverted to a more standard uniform design, which you can see on 1968 KDKA Steelers cards. Too bad, I think. I kind of like the caped look.

Oddly, though the Steelers were wearing the Batman uniforms going into the 1967 season, the uniforms appear on only one 1967 Philadelphia football card, the Giants Play card shown here. This card shows the Giants and Steelers in their December, 1966, game in New York. All of the 1967 Philadelphia cards of individual Steelers, however, show them in older uniforms. The Batman jerseys didn’t appear on cards of individual Steelers until the 1968 Topps set, after the team stopped wearing them. The jerseys also appeared on several 1969 Topps cards, and on one 1970 Topps card, Chuck Hinton.

Along with the 1969 Topps Andy Russell card above, here are all of the cards I found that picture players wearing Batman jerseys. Click on any card to get the details about it. There are also a few photos of the Batman uniforms–including a great team shot–on UniWatch’s 1966-67 Steelers flickr page.

As I’ve written before, my favorite pose on a football card pictures the player about to put on his helmet. It’s fun seeing old helmets on cards, but if the players are wearing them, you can’t see their faces. Here are a few examples; for more, see an old post, My Favorite Pose.

1963 Topps Ernie McMillan and 1966 Philadelphia Don Chandler:

1967 Philadelphia Gail Cogdill and 1968 Topps Junior Coffey:

1968 Topps Dan Reeves and 1969 Topps J.R. Wilburn:

In a previous post, I said that John Brockington’s 1972 Topps card pictured him in what looked like his College All-Star jersey with the stars airbrushed away. Browsing through the rest of my 1972 Topps football cards, I found four other players, all rookies, in the same jersey: Jim Plunkett, Lyle Alzado, Ron Hornsby, and Julius Adams. Here are pictures of them.

I checked Marc Bolding’s College All-Star Game site and found that the five players indeed appeared on the roster for the 1971 game. Adams and Brockington also appear in photos on the game summary page. I assume that the jerseys Adams and Brockington are wearing in the game photos are the very same ones they are wearing on their cards.

At least two more players on the 1971 All-Star roster have rookie cards in the 1972 Topps set: John Riggins and Dan Pastorini. These two appear in their new pro uniforms, Riggins with the Jets and Pastorini with the Oilers.

Judging by his football cards, Y.A. Tittle seldom took off his helmet. From 1953 to 1964, the only Tittle card I know of that shows him bareheaded is his 1961 Topps card. Here he is in his many helmets:

I think it must have been Tittle’s preference to wear his helmet for photos, since I can’t think of any other player who appeared helmeted on so many cards. As I’ve written before, I usually don’t like images of players wearing their helmets, because the helmets cover too much of the players’ faces. But Y.A.’s many appearances in his helmet made him look natural in it, like Doonesbury’s B.D.

Back when kickers still kicked “conventionally,” some of them wore special square-toed kicking shoes. A few of the shoes showed up on cards: here we have a 1964 Philadelphia Sam Baker, a 1966 Philadelphia Bruce Gossett, and a 1974 Topps Curt Knight.

Reading about these kickers, I discovered that each of the three attempted at least one “fair catch kick” in his career. Knight attempted two of them. According to Wikipedia, in the history of the NFL, only 21 such kicks have been attempted in regular season and playoff games. Alas, our three square-toed kickers all missed their kicks.

Jay Cutler wasn’t mad at the coach. He just didn’t want to wear these socks! (Here’s another view.)

The Broncos are wearing their 1960 uniforms twice this year–complete with striped socks–on October 11 and 19. You can see a the full uniform on the Broncos web site. Unfortunately, I don’t have a card to show you: I looked through all of my early Broncos cards, and none of them show the striped socks. Oh well, at least I have an idea now for Halloween.

Today’s article in the Uni Watch blog bemoans the disappearance of “shoulder loops” on NFL jerseys. (Scroll down to Getting Loopy On You.) The article prompted me to look through my old cards to find which teams’ uniforms had the loops. As I did that, I realized that my favorite uniforms were the ones with the loops, and the loops were the reason I liked them. Here they are, both on 1964 Topps cards: the Patriots uniform, modeled by Ron Burton, and the Chargers uniform, modeled by Earl Faison.

I believe these 1964 cards show the players in their 1963 uniforms, so these are also the uniforms that the Patriots and Chargers are using as throwbacks this year. The eight original AFL teams are wearing throwback uniforms in several games in 2009 to commemorate their 50th year of play. The Patriots chose their 1963 uniform because they won the AFL East Division that year, and the Chargers chose 1963 because it was the year they won the AFL championship.

Sometimes you get to a topic in a roundabout way. Last night I came across this terrific 1954 Bowman Jim Dooley card, and I thought I’d look for other cards that picture players in their College All-Star uniforms. I found John Brockington’s 1972 Topps rookie card, which I believe shows him in an All-Star jersey with the stars airbrushed off. It’s not an Ohio State jersey, and it’s not a Packers jersey, but it has the style of an All-Star jersey, and Brockington played in the All-Star game in 1971. (Topps also used this image of Brockington on his 1972 All-Pro card, where they airbrushed his jersey Packer green.)

Anyway, looking around the internet for pictures of players in their All-Star uniforms, I found a site called The Chicago Charities College All-Star Game 1934-1976. What a great site! It provides the background and history of the game, scores from each year, a summary of each year’s game, game records, the MVPs, and yearly attendance. Some of the early games drew over 100,000 fans!

The MVP awards were given only to the college players, and the positions that the MVPs played show how the game evolved. In the 30′s and 40′s, nearly all of the MVPs were running backs, and there was even an offensive lineman, Bill Fischer. In the 50′s and 60′s, as the passing game became more prevalent, the award went mainly to quarterbacks. In the late 60′s and 70′s, when the NFL dominated the game and stuffed the All-Star offenses, many of the awards went to the All-Stars’ defensive players. The college MVP in the final game, in 1973? The punter, Ray Guy!

Find Jim Dooley cards on: eBay, Nearmint’s Cards.

Head-and-shoulder portraits, fake action shots, and sideline photos are all great, but my favorite pose on a football card is where the player is holding his helmet with both hands, as if he is going to put it on. I like seeing helmets on vintage cards, but if the player is wearing his helmet, it usually makes for a poor photo.

The helmet-in-hands pose appears to have been used mostly in the 1960′s. That was after facemasks got substantial enough to obscure the players’ faces, but it was before Topps started airbrushing logos away in the 1970′s. The photographers for some teams in particular favored the pose: it is used for several of the 1963 Topps Packers cards, for instance, and for most of their 1969 Topps cards.

Below are a few examples: 1968 Topps Jerry Logan, 1966 Philadelphia Irv Cross, 1964 Philadelphia Guy Reese, 1969 Topps Alex Karras, 1963 Topps Lou Michaels, and 1967 Philadelphia Bob Hayes. For more, see a thread on the topic that I started on the Collector’s Universe message boards. I posted a bunch of pictures there before the discussion, um, went south.

A recent cover of Sports Collectors Digest, headlined Pretty in Pink, pictured a group of 1959 Topps football cards with pink backgrounds. Great cover, I thought, and it reminded me of the 1961 Topps cards of the Houston Oilers. On all but one of the Oilers cards in that set, the player is shown in a pink jersey.

As far as I know, the Oilers wore only the light blue jerseys shown on their 1961 Fleer cards. Topps evidently airbrushed the blue jerseys pink, but why? Topps headquarters is in New York City, and the New York Titans finished second to the Oilers in the AFL East in 1960. Might a Topps employee have colored the Oilers pink to exact a bit of revenge for his team?

According to Wikipedia, 0 and 00 are no longer legal uniform numbers in the NFL. That means that the players who wore them effectively have had their numbers retired. Pictured here are cards of five players who wore number 0 or 00: a 1963 Fleer Jim Otto, a 1972 Topps Ken Burrough, a 1961 Fleer Wallet Picture of John Olszewski, a 1968 Topps Obert Logan, and a 1948 Bowman John Clement.

I learned from the Wikipedia article that Jim Otto wore 00 because you could pronounce it like his name: aught-oh. Otto wore number 50 in his first season, 1960, and he switched to 00 for the remainder of his career. Otto’s 1964 Topps card shows a four-year-old image of him wearing number 50.

John Olszewski and Obert Logan also wore numbers other than 0 early in their careers. Olszewski’s cards with the Chicago Cardinals picture him in numbers 33 and 36. Logan’s 1967 Philadelphia card shows him in number 25 for the Cowboys.

The Helmet Project has hundreds of beautiful illustrations of professional and college football helmets past and present. It includes helmets of teams from defunct professional leagues such as the XFL, USFL, WFL, and WALF. It also includes college helmets down through NCAA Division 3 and NAIA.

Shown here are most of the helmets the Denver Broncos have used since their first season in 1960. Personally, I like the old cartoonish figures more than the current angry horse head, but I suppose cartoon figures aren’t intimidating enough these days.

Not many football cards show the players wearing their helmets, since the facemasks cover the players’ faces. Frank Emanuel’s 1968 Topps card, shown here, is one exception, and as you can see, it turned out badly. Wise photographers who wanted helmets in the pictures asked the players to hold them.

Because Topps did not have the rights to reproduce team logos on its cards, in the 70′s the company airbrushed the logos off the helmets. This made for some ugly cards, this 1972 Topps Ken Willard in Action card being one example. Topps also realized that they could use airbrushing when a player was traded, to change his uniform from one color to another without having to take another picture. This made for some very ugly cards, but that’s a topic for another day.

To see all those missing helmet logos, do check out The Helmet Project!