Nearmint’s Vintage Football Card Blog

Topps produced a great variety of football cards in the 1960s: AFL cards and NFL cards, cards with natural backgrounds and cards with colored ones, cards oriented horizontally and cards oriented vertically, cards bordered by stars and cards that looked like little TVs, standard-sized cards and “tall boys.” A collector who focused on just 1960s Topps football cards could build a large, attractive, and interesting collection.

Topps had competition in the 1960s, and I attribute some of their creativity to that. The competition coincided with the emergence of the AFL: while the AFL and NFL competed for fans, the card companies aligned with the leagues and competed as well.

Fleer was the card company of the early AFL. From 1960 to 1963, Fleer produced three AFL-only sets and one AFL/NFL set. In the same time period, Topps produced three NFL sets and one AFL/NFL set. Both companies produced their combined AFL/NFL sets in 1961.

In 1964, Philadelphia Gum Company obtained the rights to print cards of NFL players, and they did so until 1967. Topps countered with AFL-only sets from 1964 to 1967.

In 1968, after the NFL and AFL agreed to merge, Topps obtained the rights to both leagues. By the early 1970s, without competition, Topps’s creativity began to wane. That rant is for a later post, though. This week we’ll look at Topps’s offerings from 1960 to 1963, the years they competed with Fleer.

1960 Topps

1960 Topps is my least favorite 60s Topps set, probably because it is less colorful than their later sets. I am not fond of the big footballs with the players’ names in them, either: they remind me of the big white footballs on 1953 Bowman cards. Though Topps evidently had the rights to use the teams’ logos, they put them only on the team cards, which is unfortunate. I do like that the images of the players cover most of the cards, unlike the peephole views on 1958 Topps cards.

The 1960 Topps set was printed on a single 132-card sheet. There is a virtual 1960 Topps sheet, and a few notes about the set, in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. One bit of trivia about the set is that three of the cards–Bill Wade, Doug Atkins, and Frank Varrichione–have reversed images. Another is that, to my knowledge, this was the first Topps set to contain inserts in the packs. The inserts were metallic stickers: novel, but ugly.

1960 Topps was the first major set in which all cards from a given team were grouped together numerically. I always liked this feature. Topps continued the practice until 1968, then abandoned it. Coincidentally–or was it?–1968 was the year they no longer had competition.

Finally, the 1960 Topps set was the first in which the Dallas Cowboys appeared. The Cowboys joined the NFL in 1960. Doyle Nix is the only Cowboy in the 1960 Topps set who did not appear on an earlier card for a different team.

1961 Topps

The 1961 Topps set was released in two series, the first containing NFL players, and the second containing AFL players. This is how Fleer released their 1961 set, as well. Though the price guides give higher values to the second series cards in both sets, the second series cards are in fact more plentiful than the first series cards. Be skeptical of your price guides.

1961 Topps was the first set to contain action cards, like the Eddie LeBaron card shown here. Each action card was framed by a woodgrain TV, a precursor to the 1966 Topps cards. The 1961 Topps and Fleer sets were the first to contain Minnesota Vikings cards. The Vikings were an expansion team in 1961.

Oddly, most of the Houston Oilers in the 1961 Topps set are shown in pink jerseys, though their team color was powder blue. Only George Blanda was spared the pink treatment.

1962 Topps

I love the design of the 1962 Topps set. Each player card shows two images of the player: an above-the-waist still image, and a black-and-white inset photo of the player in action. Some of the inset photos show the wrong players, however. It turns out that Topps even altered some of the photos to give the imposters different numbers.

The 1962 Topps set is tough to assemble in high grade, because the black borders show wear easily. I think high grade is the only way to go, though, since even a little wear can make the cards look bad.

I have seen a few recolored cards from this set, where someone tried to touch up a corner or an edge with a black marker. You can often detect recoloring by looking at the edges of a card, because the ink from a black marker will bleed onto the edge.

Other than the unique design, I can’t think of any remarkable features of this set. The unique design is enough for me, though.

1963 Topps

The 1963 Topps set is another tough one. Its colored borders are slightly more forgiving of wear than 1962’s black borders, but this is another set I would try to get in high grade.

There are a lot of short prints in the 1963 Topps set, and they are marked in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. That tells only part of the story, though. Many of the short prints–in particular some of the Steelers and Redskins–are practically impossible to find well-centered. I suspect that the problem cards were on the edges of the sheets, but I have not seen an uncut sheet, so I can’t verify that.

There is one bit of innovation in the 1963 Topps set. The backs have questions with hidden answers, like some scratch-off cards. (See S is for Scratch-Offs.) You don’t scratch them to see the answers, though. Instead, you hold a piece of red cellophane over them. I used to have a bit of the red cellophane, which I assume came in a pack with the cards, but I can’t locate it now. I might never know the answers to these questions.

One last thing worth mentioning is that the backgrounds of many 1963 Topps cards vary in color: you can find them with either a blue sky or a purple one. There used to be a good article on geocities about the variations, but the article is no longer there. Someday maybe I’ll write about the variations myself. Until then, you can see the purple and blue variations of Willie Wood’s rookie card in one of my previous blog articles.

• Previous: T is for Topps, Part 1: the 1950s
• Next: T is for Topps, Part 3: 1964-1969
• All of the ABCs

I found this “customized” 1962 Topps Jim Ringo card buried in my junk card drawer today. The Packers traded Ringo to the Eagles after the 1963 season (because he asked for a raise, according to a Packers legend), and whoever owned this card adjusted it for the trade. It reminded me of a thread in the Collectors Universe forums about cards that kids had “improved.” A couple are pretty funny–check them out!

Sam Etcheverry, a Hall of Fame quarterback for the Canadian Football League’s Montreal Alouettes, died on Saturday. Etcheverry also played for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1961 and 1962. Pictured here are Etcheverry’s 1961 Topps and 1962 Topps cards. He also appeared for the Cardinals on a 1962 Post Cereal card, and he had several CFL cards in the 1950’s. I don’t have pictures of his CFL cards, unfortunately.

Having seen only his NFL cards, I didn’t know about Etcheverry’s accomplishments in the CFL. As a player he appeared in three Grey Cups (CFL championship games), and he was the league’s most outstanding player in 1954. He passed for 586 yards in one game in 1954, and in 1956 he had a 109-yard pass–no, not a typo, because the CFL’s field is 110 yards long. Etcheverry’s CFL Hall of Fame page has a nice summary of his accomplishments and a great photo of him throwing a jump pass. (I love this shot: see my jumping quarterbacks post.)

I don’t yet have CFL cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery, but one day I hope to add them. It will be interesting to see how players like Etcheverry moved between the CFL and the U.S. leagues in their careers. With the addition of the Cowboys and Vikings to the NFL in 1960 and 1961, and with the creation of the AFL in 1960, the talent pool in the NFL was somewhat diluted, and I imagine that other longtime CFL players also got their shot at the NFL in the early 1960’s.

• Search for Sam Etcheverry on: Nearmint’s Cards, eBay.

A few months ago I created a page called Mistaken Identities: Vintage Football Cards Picturing the Wrong Player. The page shows numerous cards in which the main photo is incorrect. I learned from my Beckett catalog, though, that there are also a bunch of 1962 Topps cards that picture the wrong player in the black-and-white inset photo. What’s more, it appears that Topps faked a couple of these photos intentionally, altering the imposter’s jersey number to match the player on the card.

Here is one of the altered jersey numbers: the inset photo on Zeke Bratkowski’s 1962 Topps card actually shows John Unitas, with his number changed from 19 to 12. Topps evidently couldn’t find a good game photo of Bratkowski, though he had been in the league for eight years. It’s too bad, because Bratkowski took great action shots. On his his 1962 Post Cereal card, he’s throwing while going down, and on his 1958 Topps card, he’s leaping over palm trees!

The second altered jersey is on Fran Tarkenton’s rookie card. Beckett says that it’s Sonny Jurgensen in the inset photo, with his number changed from 9 to 10. It’s hard to tell from the photo, but does Jurgensen still have Eagle wings on his helmet?

The third imposter is on Roman Gabriel’s rookie card. On this card, the player in the inset photo is clearly Y.A. Tittle. It is understandable that Topps didn’t have an NFL game shot of Gabriel, since 1962 was his first year in the league. This time they didn’t try to fool us: they just picked out a nice quarterback photo and called it good.

Last, we have a couple of Redskins. That’s Don Bosseler pictured in the inset photo of Dick James’s card. Bosseler didn’t appear in the 1962 Topps set on a card of his own, so it’s nice that they gave him a cameo. (He did, however, appear on a 1962 Post Cereal card.)

I added a nice stack of ungraded 1962 and 1964 Topps cards to nearmintcards.com today, including this 1964 Topps Ron Mix. Ron is a hall-of-famer, but he’s not too imposing in this photo. Say, isn’t that the chicken dance?

As I was pricing the 1964 Topps cards, I found a recent eBay auction for a PSA 8 Art Powell that closed at $1150. Not bad! PSA has given only six Powell cards a grade of 8, and evidently a couple of people in the PSA set registry were duking it out for the card. Alas, I didn’t have any Powells in my stack that were worthy of submitting to PSA.

Update: I also just started an auction on eBay for 57 different Exmt-Ex 1964 Topps football cards.