Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

Ron Drzewiecki turned 80 years old yesterday; he was a running back and kick returner for the Chicago Bears in 1955 and 1957. As far as I know, Drzewiecki did not appear on a football card with the Bears, but he later appeared on a 1960 Fleer card with the Oakland Raiders. Drzewiecki signed to play with the Raiders in April, 1960, but I could not find any 1960 stats for him, so apparently he did not play in the regular season.

Drzewiecki played college football at Marquette University, and he was inducted into the Marquette M Club Hall of Fame in 1985. The Marquette library has several photos of Drzewiecki in action. (Marquette ended its football program in 1960.)

Drzewiecki is the 491st oldest living pro football player, according to oldestlivingprofootball.com.

Happy birthday, Mr. Drzewiecki!

I hope you like this feature, because it took me awhile: I identified all of the players in the Vintage Football Card Gallery who are members of the College Football Hall of Fame. You can do a search for all of the College Hall of Famers, all of the College Hall of Famers from a certain college (say Ohio State), or all of the College Hall of Famers from a certain pro team (say the Los Angeles Rams). Use the Gallery’s Advanced Search page to specify whatever combinations you like.

What I like most about this feature is that it highlights some cards that you typically find in the commons bin. Some players with stellar college careers had short or not-as-stellar pro careers, and you wouldn’t know from their cards how good they were in college. The player pictured here is one example: Jim Swink was runner-up to Howard Cassady for the Heisman Trophy in 1955, and he was elected to the College Hall of Fame in 1980. Swink played pro football for just one season–1960 for the AFL’s Dallas Texans–and this 1960 Fleer card is his only football card.

Sam DeLuca, an offensive lineman from 1960 to 1966 for the Los Angeles/San Diego Chargers and New York Jets, passed away on September 13. NYDailyNews.com has a report. DeLuca also spent two seasons, 1957 and 1958, with the CFL’s Toronto Argonauts. After his playing career, DeLuca was a radio broadcaster for New York Jets games; you can see his profile at musicradio77.com.

The card pictured here is DeLuca’s first AFL card, a 1960 Fleer. The image shows DeLuca in his University of South Carolina uniform; there is a similar image on the USC Athletic Hall of Fame web site. DeLuca also appeared on a 1959 Topps CFL card (though he did not play that year) and on several cards while in the AFL.

You can see all of DeLuca’s AFL football cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. I don’t yet have CFL cards in the Gallery, but there are usually copies of his 1959 Topps CFL card on eBay.

For Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d give you a bunch of Flowers. As always, you can click on any image to get more details.

First is Keith Flowers, on a 1952 Bowman Small card. Flowers had a short NFL career, playing nine games in 1952 for the Dallas Texans and Detroit Lions. Bowman issued two sets of football cards in 1952, identical except for their size, so Flowers appeared on a 1952 Bowman Large card, as well. Not bad for a few games.

Next is Stan Flowers, who appeared on a 1960 Fleer card with the Patriots but never saw playing time. (I’m inferring this because he does not have a page at pro-football-reference.com.) Fleer apparently chose the players for their 1960 set well before the season started, because I’d guess that a third of the players in the set never actually played in the AFL.

Charlie Flowers is also in the 1960 Fleer set, and he did see playing time: two seasons at fullback with the Chargers, and one with the New York Titans. He appeared on several cards with the Chargers, one being the tough 1961 Golden Tulip Chargers card shown here.

Unlike the guys above, Richmond Flowers actually played awhile before he appeared on a card. He was a defensive back and kick returner for the Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants from 1969 to 1973, and he made his debut on a 1973 Topps card. In 1973, Topps increased the size of their football card set from 351 to 528, so they were able to include many players who had not appeared on cards earlier.

Finally, we have Tom Flores, a longtime quarterback and coach for the Oakland Raiders. (He also played a couple of years for the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs.) This is one of his rookie cards, a 1961 Topps; the other is a 1961 Fleer. Flores appeared on a bunch of other colorful 1960s cards, as well.

That’s it! If you haven’t gotten your sweetie something yet, maybe you can dig through your collection and find a couple of these guys. But first I’d see if Hallmark is still open.

I probably looked at this 1960 Fleer Roger Ellis card a hundred times before I realized that he wasn’t wearing a Michigan helmet. I always assumed that the “winged” helmet design was Michigan’s only, and that it somehow symbolized a wolverine. As I wrote yesterday, though, the design has nothing to do with wolverines; it merely reflects the structural design of leather helmets back in the 1930s. Other teams used the winged design on their helmets in the 1930s, also, but most moved to different designs when they went to synthetic helmets.

Maine is another school that used the winged design, though I don’t know whether they used it on leather helmets or adopted it afterward. And that’s whose helmet Ellis is wearing: he was a Maine Black Bear before joining the AFL’s New York Titans. According to the Colonial Athletic Association page at the Helmet Project, Maine used the winged design until the mid-1970s. And guess what? Delaware, which is also in the CAA, uses the winged design to this day. I had no idea! Henshots.com has lots of recent photos of the Blue Hens in their winged helmets.

• Search Nearmint’s Cards for 1960 Fleer football cards
• Search eBay for Roger Ellis

Don Flynn, who played for the Dallas Texans and New York Titans in 1960 and 1961, passed away on April 14. He appeared on one football card that I know of, the 1960 Fleer card pictured here. Flynn’s obituary at tulsaworld.com includes a nice picture of him with Bill Meek, his college coach at the University of Houston. There is a recent photo of Flynn and his granddaughters at fanbase.com.

Though his card says he was a quarterback, Flynn spent his playing time in the AFL at defensive back. He had five career interceptions in the AFL, returning one of them for a touchdown.

Prior to his days in the AFL, Flynn spent one season, 1958, in the Canadian Football League, playing running back for the Edmonton Eskimos. His page at cflapedia.com shows his stats for the season. An article at tylerpaper.com says that Edmonton and the Dallas Texans “vied for Flynn’s services,” but that probably is not correct, since the Texans did not exist in 1958.

Occasionally you will see uncut sheets of vintage cards up for sale. Studying uncut sheets can give you insight into why some cards are much harder to find than others. For example, by looking at the uncut sheets for a set, you can see why some cards are considered short prints or double prints. For most sets, the price guides indicate which cards are short prints or double prints, and they adjust the cards’ prices accordingly. I say most, because some short prints are not documented–those in the 1964-1967 Philadelphia sets, for instance.

(Image from legendaryauctions.com; click on it to see whole sheet.)

Short prints and double prints are just part of the story. A card’s position on an uncut sheet can also affect its scarcity, because cards on the corners and edges of the sheets were more likely to be damaged in production. I have not seen this factored into price guides’ prices, though: if two common cards were printed in equal numbers, the price guides will usually–if not always–assign them the same price.

The price guides do assign higher prices to the first and last cards in a set, asserting that the first and last cards generally got more wear than the other cards. Supposedly, lots of kids sorted their cards into numerical order, put rubber bands around them, and banged them around. In practice, though, I find that first and last cards aren’t noticeably scarcer in high grades than the other cards, unless they happened to be on the corners and edges of the sheets.

A recent–and timely!–thread in the Collectors Universe forums includes pictures of numerous uncut baseball card sheets and a nice discussion about short prints and double prints. The thread shows the patterns that the card companies used when arranging cards from sets of different sizes on the sheets. Depending on the size of the set (or series within a set), the card companies repeated rows of cards on the sheets in different patterns. I recommend reading the thread.

Pictured here is the card I always use as an example of one that is scarce because of its position on the sheet. It’s a 1960 Fleer Jim Woodard card, and it was in the bottom-left corner of the sheet. The Woodard is easily the toughest card in the set–PSA has graded only four of them 7 or better–and a PSA 8 would sell for hundreds of dollars on eBay. Most other PSA 8 1960 Fleer commons sell for $10-20.

Over the past year, I have put together a number of “virtual” uncut sheets in the Vintage Football Card Gallery, including one for the 1960 Fleer set. I have included a little discussion for each sheet, as well. Rather than repeat the information here, I’ll just point you to the pages for the sheets:

• 1948 Bowman
• 1948 Leaf
• 1949 Leaf
• 1950 Bowman
• 1951 Bowman
• 1952 Bowman Large
• 1953 Bowman
• 1954 Bowman
• 1955 Bowman
• 1956 Topps
• 1957 Topps
• 1958 Topps
• 1959 Topps
• 1960 Fleer
• 1960 Topps
• 1961 Fleer
• 1961 Topps
• 1962 Fleer
• 1962 Topps
• 1963 Fleer
• 1963 Topps
• 1964 Philadelphia
• 1965 Philadelphia
• 1966 Philadelphia
• 1967 Philadelphia
• 1967 Topps
• 1968 Topps
• 1969 Topps
• 1970 Topps Super

Here are more of the ABCs:

• Previous: T is for Topps, Part 4: the 1970s
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• All of the ABCs

Serafino “Foge” Fazio, a longtime college and NFL coach, died on December 2. Fazio was the head coach at Pitt from 1982 to 1985, before becoming an assistant coach in the NFL. His NFL career included defensive coaching positions with the Falcons, Jets, and Redskins, and five years as a defensive coordinator for the Vikings and Browns.

Fazio was drafted by the Boston Patriots in 1960, but he did not see playing time as a professional. He did, however, appear on a 1960 Fleer card, pictured here.

Here is the latest trivia question.

Question #4: What do the four players pictured on these 1958 Topps 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: All of them were out of football in 1959, but each of them came back to join an AFL team in 1960. Carmichael went to the Broncos, Blanda and Waller to the Oilers, and Wells to the Patriots.

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Continuing our little quiz:

Question #2: What do the three players pictured on these 1951 Bowman 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: All of them became head coaches in the AFL in its first year, 1960.

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The Fleer Corporation printed football cards each year from 1960 to 1963. In 1960, 1962, and 1963, Fleer had rights to the AFL players, while their competitor, Topps, had rights to the NFL players. In 1961, both companies printed cards of both AFL and NFL players.

The 1960 Fleer set contains players and coaches from the original eight AFL teams. Since 1960 was the first year of the AFL, many of the players were coming to the league from college, and they are shown in their college uniforms. 1959 Heisman winner Billy Cannon is one example, in his LSU uniform. Other players are shown in uniforms of NFL teams they played for in prior years: George Blanda, for instance, is in a Bears uniform. Some of the players in the set were either cut before the season or did not get any playing time, judging by the records at pro-football-reference.com. Jim Woodard and George Blanch, both with the Raiders, are two players who do not appear on that site.

I recently created a page in the Vintage Football Card Gallery that shows a virtual uncut sheet of 1960 Fleer cards. As you can see on that page, an uncut sheet contained all 132 cards in the set, so no cards were short-printed. Because of where they were positioned on the sheet, however, some cards are much more difficult to find in high grade. The scarcest card is Jim Woodard, in the bottom left corner of the sheet. The corners of the uncut sheets evidently got damaged just as the corners of cards do.

The 1960 Fleer set contains the rookie cards of Hall of Famers Ron Mix, Hank Stram, and Sid Gillman, as well as the rookie cards of Jack Kemp and Heisman Trophy winner Billy Cannon. (Sid Gillman also has a pre-rookie card in the 1959 Bell Brand Rams set.)

The 1961 Fleer set contains 220 cards, and it was released in two series: the first with 132 NFL players, the second with 88 AFL players. The cards in each series are sorted by team nickname. In the first series, the Bears cards are first, then the Browns, Cardinals, Colts, Cowboys, and so on to the Vikings. The second series has the Bills, Broncos, Chargers, etc. Interestingly, most of the photos of the NFL players show them standing, hands on hips, but most of the photos of the AFL players are action shots.

The 1961 Fleer virtual uncut sheet page shows what the second series sheets looked like, and it shows how the cards’ placement on the sheet has affected their availability in high grade. Though the price guides assign higher values to the second series cards, in reality they are more common than the first series cards, and they sell for less.

The 1961 Fleer set includes the rookie cards of two Hall of Famers, Jim Otto and Don Maynard, both AFL players. Because Topps also printed cards of AFL players in 1961, Otto and Maynard also have rookie cards in the 1961 Topps set. The 1961 Fleer set also contains two notable errors: the player on Goose Gonsoulin’s card is not Goose Gonsoulin, and the Packers logo is backward on every Green Bay Packers card.

Finally, the set reflects the changes to the leagues in 1961: the Vikings were an NFL expansion team, and the AFL’s Chargers moved from Los Angeles to San Diego.

The 1962 Fleer set contains 88 cards, and it appears to have been printed in smaller numbers than the other Fleer sets. The cards are attractive, but they suffer from poor quality control: many of them were cut off-center, and many have large amounts of wax on the back. The cards are grouped and ordered by city: Boston first, then Buffalo, Dallas, Denver, Houston, New York, Oakland, and San Diego. I have not seen an uncut sheet, but because the first four cards in the set are scarce in high grades, I’ll bet that they were on the left edge, as they are were on sheets of 1963 Fleer cards.

The only Hall-of-Famer rookie card in the 1962 Fleer set is that of Billy Shaw. Shaw is the only player in the Pro Football Hall of Fame who never played in the NFL.

The 1963 Fleer set contains 89 cards: 88 players and an unnumbered checklist. The addition of the checklist caused the Bob Dougherty and Charles Long cards in the set to be short printed, as discussed on my virtual uncut sheet page for the set. The set also has a variation that none of the price guides acknowledges: cards with numbers divisible by 4 come both with and without a bottom stripe on the back. See the 1963 Fleer uncut sheet page for a discussion of that, too.

The 1963 set contains the rookie cards of three Hall of Famers: Len Dawson, Lance Alworth, and Nick Buoniconti. It also reflects the AFL’s two team changes in 1963: the Dallas Texans moved to Kansas City and became the Chiefs, and the New York Titans changed their nickname to the Jets. According to Wikipedia, the Titans were sold in 1963 and moved to Shea Stadium, which is close to LaGuardia Airport, and they hence became the Jets. One of the new owners was Leon Hess, founder of the Hess Corporation. The early Jets colors and logo were made to resemble Hess’s.

1963 marked the end of Fleer’s short run. In 1964, Philadelphia Gum Company obtained the rights to print cards of NFL players, and Topps in turn obtained the rights to the AFL.

• Previous: E is for Error Cards
• Next: G is for Grading
• All of the ABCs

A page at pro-football-reference.com called “Cups of Coffee” lists all of the pro football players who appeared in only one NFL, AFL, or AAFC game. Of course, when I discovered the page, I wondered if any of the players had appeared on football cards. I perused the list and came up with these:

Ronnie Knox

Ronnie Knox played in one game for the Chicago Bears in 1957, but he did not throw a pass. It appears that he was the fourth-string quarterback, a rookie playing behind three veterans. Topps, oddly, printed cards of all four Bears quarterbacks in 1957. Knox also spent a few seasons in the CFL, and he appeared on a few CFL cards. You can usually find them on eBay.

Buddy Allen

Buddy Allen had three carries in one game for the Denver Broncos in 1961. He apparently at least tried out for the Oakland Raiders the year before, because his only card is the 1960 Fleer card shown here. It is possible that he was on the Raiders’ roster in 1960, but the rosters I have found online show only the players who actually played in regular season games.

Jim Yeats

Jim Yeats appeared in one game for the Houston Oilers in 1960, but he did not have any stats. The card pictured here is his 1960 Fleer card. Unfortunately, on his only card, Fleer misspelled his name. I heard from one of Yeats’s relatives a few years ago, and she told me that he was with the Packers in 1958 and 1959, and that he was still with the Oilers in 1961. He evidently did not see playing time those years.

1960 was the first year of the AFL, and the teams’ rosters apparently were not final when Fleer chose the players to include on their cards. Many of the players on 1960 Fleer cards did not see playing time in the AFL.

Don McKissack

Don McKissack played in one game for the NFL’s Dallas Texans in 1952, two years after he was drafted by the Los Angeles Rams. If you count variations, he appeared on two cards in the 1950 Felt Backs set: a brown one and a yellow one. (The price guides assign higher prices to the yellow 1950 Topps Felt Backs, but the brown ones are actually scarcer.)

Mark Burke

Mark Burke saw playing time for the Philadelphia Eagles in the last game of the 1976 season. He returned one punt for fourteen yards, not too shabby. He appeared on the 1974 West Virginia playing card pictured here.

Steve Haggerty

Steve Haggerty played in one game for the Denver Broncos in 1975, but he did not get any stats. Here he is on a 1974 Colorado Playing Card, though he had transferred to UNLV for the 1974 season.

Larry Joe

Larry Joe played one game for the AAFC’s Buffalo Bills in 1949. He had a pretty good game, gaining 82 all-purpose yards. Joe appeared on a 1948 Leaf football card–one of the tough high numbers–with Penn State. I did a quick web search for Joe and found that he still holds the Penn State record for career kickoff return average.

Last month I posted examples of my favorite pose on football cards, the pose in which the player is sitting, holding his helmet. This month I thought I’d post my favorite action shot: the quarterback throwing a jump pass. Shown here are 1960 Fleer Tom O’Connell, 1959 Topps King Hill, 1956 Topps George Shaw, and–complete with blockers!–1958 Topps Lamar McHan. Want more? The 1960 Fleer set uses the shot for at least five quarterbacks.

I couldn’t recall ever seeing a jump pass–or at least an intentional one–in a game, so I did a little YouTube search. I turned up a couple: Ralph Guglielmi of Notre Dame (at about 1:20) and Tim Tebow of Florida.

• Search Nearmint’s Football Cards for: George Shaw, Lamar McHan, King Hill
• Search eBay for: George Shaw, Lamar McHan, King Hill

I’ve never seen a full uncut sheet of 1960 Fleer football cards, so I created a page in the Football Card Gallery that shows what I think an uncut sheet looked like. I’m calling it the Virtual 1960 Fleer Uncut Sheet. To piece it together, I looked at some uncut strips like these and filled in the blanks. The page also shows some wrong-back cards from the set.

I could tell that Jack Kemp had died even before I heard the news. A bunch of his cards suddenly appeared on eBay, and I got a couple of orders for his cards, as well. If I look at the log for my gallery, I’m sure I’ll also see a lot of recent searches there for Jack Kemp cards. I check the logs every week or so, and I can often tell that a player has died by the number of searches for him.

Pictured here is Kemp’s rookie card, the cornerstone of my 1960 Fleer set. I don’t recognize his jersey, though. Many of the players in this set are pictured in their college uniforms, but Kemp doesn’t appear to be in current Occidental colors. Before the Chargers, he also spent time with the Lions, Steelers, Giants, 49ers, and Calgary Stampeders, but I don’t recognize the jersey as being from any of those teams, either. Can anyone help?