Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

Here are this week’s interesting eBay auctions for vintage football cards and related collectibles:

• Three complete sets of 1948 Bowman football cards: a high-grade set graded by PSA, a high-grade complete raw set, and a complete raw set in its original album.
• Some fun beverage cans: an Iron City Beer Can picturing the 1976 Pittsburgh Steelers and a near-set of 1976 Canada Dry cans with NFL helmets on them.
• A full set of 1961 Fleer wallet pictures, still in the album–sort of. (You can see the full list of these wallet pictures in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.)
• A leopard-print 1965 Topps Jim Otto card.
• Three 1960 Fleer wrong-back cards. (For more examples of these, see my 1960 Fleer virtual uncut sheet page.)
• Alan Page on grocery store displays for 1974 Wonder Bread and 1974 Town Talk Bread football cards. (For more on Wonder Bread and Town Talk cards, see my blog article about food issues.)
• A rare 1960 O-Pee-Chee Test Tattoo of Jim Brown–listed at $19,500! (The seller has lots more of these tattoos, as well.)
• And, finally, a PSA 10 1955 Topps All-American Knute Rockne card. Wow!

Today I added 1961 Fleer Wallet Pictures (also known as Wallet Photos) to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. When I received them, I was surprised–and disappointed–to see that they aren’t cards, they’re images on thin paper. It turns out that the pictures were hand-cut from a magazine (the 1961-62 issue of Complete Sports Pro-Football Illustrated, to be precise), and they’re on newspaper stock. I should have done my homework.

There are 145 pictures in the set: 133 from the interior pages of the magazine, and 12 smaller pictures that were on the back cover. Most of the players also appear in the regular 1961 Fleer set; one example, Lionel Taylor, is shown here. Fortunately–or I’d be really disappointed–a few of the players on the Wallet Pictures don’t appear in the 1961 Fleer set or any other set I’ve seen. At least I got to see some new faces.

(Why are they called Wallet Pictures? I’m guessing the most obvious answer: that kids could cut them out and put them in their wallets.)

The composition of the set is heavily weighted toward AFL players, though the 12 pictures from the back cover are all NFL players. The backs are as plain as plain can be, showing just the player’s name and team. Many of the backs have typos: Don Manoukian’s picture says he’s Dan Manoukin, for example, and Alan Miller is Alan Millis. I suspect that whoever worked on the backs of the pictures was also in charge of the Packers logos on the regular 1961 Fleer cards.

Pictured here are the four players in the set who, as far as I know, don’t appear in other sets: Monte Crockett and Willmer Fowler of the Bills, Bobby Gordon of the Oilers, and Don Deskins of the Raiders. Check out the huge numerals on Deskins’s jersey–and see the other Raiders, also. I believe that the extra-extra-large numerals were for fans watching grainy images on little black-and-white TV screens, but I can’t find a reference that says so. Anyone have one I can point to?

• Search Nearmint’s Cards for: 1961 Fleer football cards
• Search eBay for: 1961 Fleer Wallet Pictures, 1961 Fleer football cards

Don’t you hate it when picture day comes around and you’ve got a big ol’ scab? Or maybe these guys were sponsored by Johnson & Johnson?

Here’s John Cappelletti on his 1977 Topps card and Dave Lloyd on a 1970 Topps.

Here are two 1974 Topps cards: Calvin Hill sporting two bandages, and Dan Goich modeling the XL model.

Topps used images from the same photo session for six of Joe Namath’s cards from 1968 to 1970. Unfortunately, he had a bandage on his head. Here are Namath’s 1968 Topps Stand Up and 1970 Topps cards; see his gallery page for the whole array.

Topps used images from the same photo session for a couple of Roger Staubach’s cards, too. Steve Liskey, from thecowboysguide.com, pointed out the bandage on Staubach’s 1975 Topps card. (Thanks, Steve!) I thought the image looked familiar, so I looked through Staubach’s earlier cards and found that the bandage had made its debut on his 1974 Topps card.

Here’s Les Richter with a boo-boo on his forehead on his regular 1961 Fleer card and on his 1961 Fleer Wallet Picture. Fleer used the same images for players who appeared in both sets.

Finally, we have Doug Cunningham on his 1972 Topps card. Remove his bandage, add some eyeliner, and he’s Gomez Addams!

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.