Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

Today is the 40th anniversary of the longest NFL game, a Christmas Day AFC semi-final playoff game between the Miami Dolphins and Kansas City Chiefs. The game went 7 minutes and 40 seconds into the second overtime before Garo Yepremian ended it with a field goal. The final score: Miami 27, Kansas City 24.

Kansas City’s Ed Podolak was the star of the game; he rushed, received, and returned the ball for a total of 350 yards. The Pro Football Hall of Fame’s summary of the game includes a great photo of Podolak in action. Dig the facemask!

Topps commemorated the game in 1972, sort of. The 1972 Topps football card set was the first to contain a card for each of the previous years’ playoff games, and the Miami-Kansas City marathon happened to be one of them. Unfortuately, Topps missed an opportunity and didn’t mention that the game was the league’s longest ever. I believe that’s Ed Podolak running the ball on the front of the card. Podolak wore number 14, and that facemask looks familiar.

Merry Christmas!

Clyde Conner, an end for the San Francisco 49ers from 1956 to 1963, passed away on December 12. There is an article about Conner on the San Francisco Chronicle web site. Connor’s best season was 1958, when he caught 49 passes for 512 yards and 5 touchdowns.

The card shown here is Conner’s rookie card, a 1957 Topps, issued in his second season. He would appear on several more cards in his career, and on at least one team issue photo. You can see all of Clyde Conner’s cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

Bill “Red” Moore, a guard for the Pittsburgh Steelers from 1947 to 1949, passed away on December 14. The Beaver County (Pennsylvania) Times web site has a report.

Moore appeared on one football card, the 1948 Bowman card pictured here.

If you collect 1959 Topps football cards, you probably have seen cards with a dark mark on the bottom. You probably also have figured out that the dark mark is from the card below on the uncut sheet. Topps got a little artsy in 1959 and let the images of the players extend into the top border. Consequently, the cards don’t have to be too far off-center to have gotten a bit of the card below.

Shown here is an example, a Bart Starr card that is shifted far enough upward that it shows a bit of another player’s scalp. The other player in this case happens to be Ernie Stautner. In turn, the football in Starr’s hand extended into the top border, and most of the ball ended up on the bottom of someone else’s card.

So what, you ask? Well, I am piecing together a virtual uncut sheet of first series 1959 Topps cards, and clues from off-center cards are helping me piece the sheet together. You can see the modest beginnings of a first series sheet on my Virtual Uncut Sheets in Progress page. You can help: if you find another 1959 Topps first series card that shows a bit of a neighboring card, send me a picture of it.

What about the second series 1959 Topps sheet? Well, that one was easy, because I found a picture of a real one. You can see the virtual version in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

Glen Holloway, a guard from 1970 to 1974 for the Chicago Bears and Cleveland Browns, passed away on December 20. The Corpus Christi Caller Times web site has a report. Holloway also played one season for the World Football League’s Shreveport Steamer, according to the article.

Holloway appeared on one football card, the 1973 Topps card pictured here. He also appeared on a 1972 Sunoco stamp.

Bill Stits, who played in the NFL from 1954 to 1961 for the Detroit Lions, San Francisco 49ers, Washington Redskins, and New York Giants, passed away on December 5. At various times in his career, Stits was a defensive back, running back, punt returner, and kick returner. He intercepted six passes and recovered a fumble in his rookie season in Detroit, and he made the Pro Bowl that year.

The cards pictured here are Stit’s rookie card, a 1954 Bowman, and his 1956 Topps card. He also appeared on two 49ers team issue photos, in 1957 and 1958. I don’t yet have his 1957 photo, but can see his 1958 photo in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

Harley Sewell, who played guard from 1953 to 1963 for the Detroit Lions and Los Angeles Rams, passed away on December 17. The Austin Statesman web site has a report. Sewell was selected for the Pro Bowl four times while with Detroit, and he played on the Lions’ NFL Championship teams of 1953 and 1957.

The cards pictured here are Sewell’s rookie card, a 1953 Bowman, and his last card, a 1963 Topps. The 1953 card is evidence that Sewell was highly regarded coming out of college, because it was unusual in the 1950s for a player, especially a lineman, to appear on a card in his rookie season. The 1963 card pictures him still with the Lions, but he played for the Rams in 1963. He also appeared on a 1959 Topps card and a 1962 Post Cereal card.

Last week I added 1953 Los Angeles Rams Team Issue football cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. This was the first of five team sets that the Rams issued in the 1950s. The 1954, 1955, and 1957 cards also have black borders, and the Rams reused some of the images from year to year, so you sometimes have to look at a card’s back to determine its year. If you look through the 1955 Rams Team Issue cards in the Gallery, you can see some of the reused images.

Fans ordered the cards directly from the Rams, evidently. The 1953 set I obtained was still in the original envelope, pictured below.

I tried something new while entering the 1953 cards in my database: I added a note for each card. As I wrote in a previous article, I like it when collectors add notes when registering their graded cards, so I thought I would start entering notes for cards in the Gallery. I’ll never cover all of the cards, but when I learn something interesting about a card or a player, I’ll make a note of it. while researching this set, for example, I learned that most of the 1953 Rams players appeared in the film Crazy Legs, and that two of the players became the first head coaches of expansion teams. Check out my bits of trivia, and let me know what you think.

Yesterday I added 1968 Topps Test Team Photo cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. There are 25 cards in the set, one for each of the NFL and AFL teams except Cincinnati. The Bengals were an expansion team in 1968, and Topps evidently did not yet have a photo of the team.

The back of each team photo card lists all of the players, coaches, and other personnel who are pictured on the front. The Cleveland Browns card actually pictures the 1967 team, and I assume the photos on the other cards are at least a year old, as well.

The team photos were inserts in packs of 1968 Topps Football Patches. (See a wrapper here.) I don’t yet have the patches in the Gallery, but you can see examples on eBay.

As I wrote last week, one of my readers pointed out that the player on the cover of the San Francisco 49ers 1969 Topps Mini-Card Album is Joe Walton, and that the same image appeared in the inset photo of Walton’s 1962 Topps football card. This made me curious, so I checked to see if other inset photos from 1962 Topps cards had been reused on 1969 Mini-Card Albums. Sure enough, I found a few:

First, the image of Bart Starr on the Green Bay Packers Mini-Card Album appeared in the inset of Starr’s 1962 Topps card.

Next, the image of John Unitas on the Baltimore Colts Mini-Card Album was also used in the inset photo of Zeke Bratkowski’s 1962 Topps card. Topps changed Unitas’s number 19 to Bratkowski’s number 12 on the 1962 Topps card, as I noted in an earlier article.

The image on the Minnesota Vikings Mini-Card Album also appeared in the inset photo of Don Perkins’s 1962 Topps card, but the player’s number is different. I’m guessing that the image was altered for the 1962 card, so the player probably isn’t Perkins.

The image on the Denver Broncos Mini-Card Album is the same one used in the inset photo on Ollie Matson’s 1962 Topps card, but again, the player’s number is different. Matson was number 33 with the Rams, so it appears that the image on his 1962 card was altered. Does anyone recognize the player?

Finally, the image on the Washington Redskins Mini-Card Album is the same as the inset on John Aveni’s 1962 Topps card. Again, the player’s number appears to have been changed on the 1962 Topps card. I believe that the player is Dick James, who wore number 47 for the Redskins in 1961.

Given that there are so many altered jersey numbers on the 1962 Topps cards, I wonder how many of the inset photos actually picture the right player. Not many, I’ll bet.