Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

Last week, on my Facebook page, Pastor Scott asked if I knew if Fleer had planned a second series of football cards in 1963, since the 1963 checklist says “1st SERIES.” I told Scott that I had not noticed the label before, but that it was reasonable to surmise that Fleer had planned another series. Fleer printed two series in 1961–one of NFL players and one of AFL players–and perhaps the company had hopes of doing the same in 1963. (For more on Fleer’s early 1960s football cards, see F is for Fleer.)

The 1963 checklist is also curious for other reasons:

• It’s the first and only checklist that Fleer printed in its four years of producing football cards.
• It is the only card in the 1963 set that is not numbered.
• On an uncut sheet, the player cards were in a predictable order, by number, but the checklist was stuck in the middle, displacing two of the player cards. (You can see this on my virtual uncut 1963 Fleer sheet.)
• It is a short print (and so are the two cards it displaced on the sheet).
• It is orange and green, though the base color of the player cards is red. Checklists typically have the same color scheme as the rest of the set.

To me, it looks like a new Fleer manager came in just before production and said, “Hey, Topps has checklists, so we need to throw one in there, too. And maybe we’ll have a second series, so put ‘first series’ on it.” And then they left the kiddies hanging.

Fleer wasn’t the only company that had football card plans grander than they could execute. As I wrote in N is for National Chicle, the backs of 1935 National Chicle cards say “one of 240 football players with playing tips,” but there are only 36 cards in the set. There were only eight pro teams at the time, so 240 cards would have covered practically every player in the league. As I said in the article, I suspect that the company planned to include college players and coaches in their set, as well.

If you’re a Knute Rockne or Notre Dame fan, check out The Unofficial Homepage of Knute Rockne. It’s a tribute site assembled by Rockne’s cousin’s grandson, Birger Rokne, from Rockne’s hometown, Voss, Norway. I found Rockne’s association with Studebaker interesting–did you know that Studebaker produced a model called the Rockne? Cousin Birger has a restored one, and his site includes a photo or two.

The card shown here is Rockne’s 1935 National Chicle football card. It is the only card in the set that does not picture an NFL player. You can see Rockne’s other cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

I started to write an article today about coaches on football cards, but then I realized that a lot of coaches appeared on football cards–too many to cover in one article. So I thought I’d break the subject into blog-sized pieces. This is the first.

Knute Rockne was the first coach to appear on a football card–or at least he’s the first I can think of. Pictured here is Rockne’s rookie card, from the 1933 Goudey Sport Kings multi-sport set. This is one of three football cards in the set, the others being Red Grange and Jim Thorpe. (The Virtual Card Collection web site shows all of the cards in the Sport Kings set.)

Until today, when I visited his official web site, I hadn’t realized that Rockne died in 1931, two years before his Sport Kings card was issued. He was only 43 when he was killed in a plane crash in Kansas, on his way to Los Angeles to assist with “The Spirit of Notre Dame,” a movie about–what else?–Notre Dame football. According to his Wikipedia page, “Rockne was…shrewd enough to recognize that intercollegiate sports had a show-business aspect. Thus he worked hard promoting Notre Dame football so as to make it financially successful.” His IMDB page shows that he worked on a number of short films released in 1931.

Rockne was also the second coach to appear on a football card, this one in the 1935 National Chicle set. His is definitely the odd card in this set, since the rest of the National Chicle cards show NFL players of the day. The image on Rockne’s National Chicle card also appeared on his 1955 Topps All-American card.

• Search eBay for: Knute Rockne, 1933 Sport Kings, 1935 National Chicle
• Search Nearmint’s Cards for: Notre Dame Alumni

In 1935, the National Chicle Gum Company printed the first set of football cards that featured NFL players. The backs of the cards indicate that the company had planned to print 240 cards (see the second-to-bottom line on the card back below), but they stopped far short of that, at 36. That’s a pity, because the cards are little works of art.

There are six rookie cards of Hall of Fame members in the National Chicle set: Dutch Clark, Ken Strong, Cliff Battles, Turk Edwards, Clarke Hinkle, and Bronko Nagurski. Because so few football cards were printed before 1935, most of the rest of the cards in the set are rookies, too. The single non-rookie card is Knute Rockne, who appeared in the multi-sport 1933 Sport Kings set. Rockne, the Notre Dame coach, is the also the only person in the National Chicle set who was not an NFL player. This suggests to me that some of the cards beyond the initial 36 would have been of college players and coaches. There were only eight NFL teams in 1935, and 240 cards distributed among eight teams would have been 30 cards per team. Rosters were smaller back then (pro-football-reference.com shows 31 players on the Packers’ 1935 roster), and 30 cards per team would have covered practically all of the players in the league.

Three of the teams represented in the National Chicle set either moved or changed names before the next major football card offerings in 1948. The Boston Redskins moved to Washington in 1937. The Pittsburgh Pirates became the Steelers in 1939. The Brooklyn Dodgers became the Brooklyn Tigers in 1944, and they merged with the Boston Yanks in 1945. The Yanks eventually became the Indianapolis Colts, by way of New York, Dallas, and Baltimore.

When I added the National Chicle set to the Vintage Football Card Gallery, I was surprised to learn that three of the players’ names were misspelled. Homer Griffith‘s name is misspelled “Griffiths” on his card, Phil Sarboe‘s name is misspelled “Sorboe,” and John Dell Isola‘s last name is misspelled “Isola”–without the “Dell.” Misspelled names are not unusual on vintage cards, but considering the care taken to design the cards’ images, I would not have expected the cards to have spelling mistakes.

While the fronts of the cards are beautifully designed, the backs are interesting in their own way. Rather than focusing on the players’ stats, as more recent cards do, the card backs give tips on how to play the game, using the players as examples. There are four slight variations of the card backs, having to do with the size and placement of Eddie Casey’s signature, whether his credentials are shown, and whether the copyright line is included on the card. You can see examples of the four variations–as well as a long discussion on which variations appear on which cards–in a thread on the Collectors Universe message board.

You can see the full set of 1935 National Chicle football cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

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• All of the ABCs

Here’s an easy one.

Question #5: What do the three players pictured on these football cards have in common?

Scroll down slowly; the answer is after the sponsored links. For more information on a card, click on it or hold your cursor over it.

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Answer: Each of them once held the NFL record for longest field goal. For a nice article on the record, see The Longest Field Goal in NFL History: Evolution of the Record.

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Yesterday I added 1935 National Chicle cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. What a beautiful set! My favorite cards are the Pittsburgh Pirates, in their bumblebee uniforms. (The Pirates became the Steelers in 1939.)

For more about the set, see N is for National Chicle in my ABCs of Vintage Football Cards series.

According to the Oldest Living Pro Football Players web site, Ralph Kerchival is the oldest living pro player, at nearly 98 years old. He was a back and kicker with the Brooklyn Dodgers of the NFL from 1934 to 1940. In a 1993 interview, Kercheval said that he played on both offense and defense for the Dodgers, and in his rookie year he played for all but five minutes of the entire season. (Don’t miss the cartoon clipping from the Additional Photos section of the interview page.)

Pictured here is Kercheval’s 1935 National Chicle rookie card. He also appeared on a 1955 Topps All-American card.

• Search eBay for Ralph Kercheval cards.