Happy Birthday, Fred Dugan!

May 12th, 2013  |  Published in Milestone Birthdays

Fred Dugan 1963 Topps football cardFormer NFL end Fred Dugan is celebrating his 80th birthday today. Dugan played from 1958 to 1963 for the San Francisco 49ers, Dallas Cowboys, and Washington Redskins. His best season was 1961, when he gained 817 yards on 53 receptions for the Redskins.

Dugan is shown here on his 1963 Topps football card, one of the short prints in the set. He appeared on several other cards, as well.

Dugan is the 493rd oldest living pro American football player, according to oldestlivingprofootball.com.

Happy birthday, Mr. Dugan!

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Happy Birthday, Tom Bettis and Chuck Muncie!

March 17th, 2013  |  Published in Milestone Birthdays

Two players in the Vintage Football Card Gallery are celebrating milestone birthdays today: Tom Bettis is 80, and Chuck Muncie is 60.

Tom Bettis played linebacker from 1955 to 1963 for the Green Bay Packers, Pittsburgh Steelers, and Chicago Bears. He was a member of two NFL Championship teams, the 1961 Packers and the 1963 Bears. After his playing career, Bettis held numerous coaching positions in the NFL, including a stint as interim head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs in 1977. There is a nice summary of Bettis’s career at InstantNewsKaty.com.

According to oldestlivingprofootball.com, Bettis is the 495th oldest living professional football player. He is pictured here on his 1963 Topps card, one of the short prints in the set. He also appeared on a two cards with the Packers.
Tom Bettis 1963 Topps football cardChuck Muncie 1978 Topps football card
Chuck Muncie was a running back from 1976 to 1984 for the New Orleans Saints and San Diego Chargers. Muncie gained over 1000 yards twice, in 1979 and 1981, and in 1981 he led the NFL with 19 touchdowns. Before his pro career, Muncie starred at the University of California, finishing second in voting for the Heisman in 1975. (See my page of football cards of Heisman Trophy candidates.)

After football, Muncie founded a youth foundation in California. He is pictured here on his 1978 Topps football card.

Happy birthday, Messrs. Bettis and Muncie!

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Harley Sewell, Lions and Rams Guard

December 19th, 2011  |  Published in Player Deaths

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.
Harley Sewell 1953 Bowman rookie football cardHarley Sewell 1963 Topps football card

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New in the Gallery: 1963 Topps Virtual Uncut Sheets

August 26th, 2011  |  Published in New in the Gallery

Yesterday I added virtual uncut sheets of 1963 Topps cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. I have not seen an actual 1963 Topps sheet, but I was able to figure out the sheets’ configuration by looking at miscut cards and applying a little logic. Unfortunately, these sheets are not yet completely accurate, and I could use your help. I believe I have all of the player cards in the right places, but I have not yet figured out the order of the team cards and checklists within their rows. If you happen to find any badly miscut team cards, checklists, or neighboring cards, please send me pictures of them.

With these sheets I introduced a new feature: I started highlighting the cards that are scarcest in high grades. This helps illustrate how a card’s position on the sheet affects its availability. As I have time, I will go back and do this for the other sheets, as well.

(Click on the image to see the full sheets.)
Virtual uncut sheet of 1963 Topps football cards

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Gerry Huth, Giants, Eagles, and Vikings Guard

February 15th, 2011  |  Published in Player Deaths

Gerry Huth 1963 Topps football cardGerry Huth, a guard for six seasons with the New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles, and Minnesota Vikings, passed away on February 11. Huth was a member of the 1956 Giants and 1960 Eagles NFL Championship teams. His obituary at newcomerlouisville.com includes a summary of his football career.

Huth’s only football card, the 1963 Topps card pictured here, was issued in his last NFL season. This is the “blue sky” variation of the card; there is also a “purple sky” variation. You can see the variations side-by-side in the PSA Set Registry.

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Ron Kramer, Packers and Lions Tight End

September 11th, 2010  |  Published in Player Deaths

1963 Topps Ron Kramer football cardRon Kramer, who played tight end for the Packers and Lions from 1957 to 1967, passed away today. Kramer made the Pro Bowl in 1962 for the Packers, and he is a member of the Packers Hall of Fame. There is a nice article about Kramer’s career on the Pro Football Researchers web site.

My favorite Ron Kramer card is the one pictured here, a 1963 Topps card. The Packers cards in the 1963 set have green-and-gold borders, so the borders match the Packers’ uniforms. This appears to have been a coincidence, since the border colors Topps used for the other teams’ cards don’t match their uniform colors.

Kramer’s rookie card is a 1958 Topps, which I featured in a previous article. He also appeared on a 1961 Lake to Lake Packers card and on two Topps cards with the Lions. You can see all of Ron Kramer’s cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

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New in the Gallery: Interactive 1963 Topps Cowboys Team Card

July 27th, 2010  |  Published in Football Card Trivia, Interactive Team Cards, New in the Gallery, Sites I Like

1963 Topps Dallas Cowboys team football cardYesterday I added an “interactive” 1963 Topps Dallas Cowboys team card to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. By placing the cursor over a player, you can see who the player is, and by clicking on him, you can see all of his cards. (It doesn’t work on the card pictured here–you have to go to the gallery page.) As the gallery page says, this 1963 card actually pictures the 1960 Cowboys team, and only eight of the players were still with the team when the card was issued.

The Cowboys were an expansion team in 1960, and they obtained most of their players from the other teams via an expansion draft. Each of the other teams made nine players available, and the Cowboys chose three of them. Like the other teams, the Cowboys also obtained players via trades, free agency, and other teams’ waiver lists. Unfortunately, the league approved the franchise too late for the Cowboys to participate in the college draft, and the team also had to compete with the upstart AFL for free agents. The result: a 0-11-1 season.

To see how the Cowboys assembled their original team, check out The Original 1960 Dallas Cowboys Roster at thecowboysguide.com. The page includes pictures of the team-issued photos for most of the players, and it also shows many of the players’ first cards. Very interesting!

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More of My Favorite Pose

May 8th, 2010  |  Published in Uniforms

As I’ve written before, my favorite pose on a football card pictures the player about to put on his helmet. It’s fun seeing old helmets on cards, but if the players are wearing them, you can’t see their faces. Here are a few examples; for more, see an old post, My Favorite Pose.

1963 Topps Ernie McMillan and 1966 Philadelphia Don Chandler:
1963 Topps Ernie McMillan football card1966 Philadelphia Don Chandler football card
1967 Philadelphia Gail Cogdill and 1968 Topps Junior Coffey:
1967 Philadelphia Gail Cogdill football card1968 Topps Junior Coffey football card
1968 Topps Dan Reeves and 1969 Topps J.R. Wilburn:
1968 Topps Dan Reeves football card1969 Topps J.R. Wilburn football card

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T is for Topps, Part 2: 1960-1963

February 5th, 2010  |  Published in ABCs of Vintage Football Cards


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 homely.

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 impostors 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; 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. Most of the problem cards were on the edges of the sheets. You can see what the sheets looked like on my 1963 Topps virtual uncut sheet page.

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.

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A Fun Message Board Topic: Miscut Cards

November 8th, 2009  |  Published in Interesting eBay Auctions, Interesting Message Board Threads

There’s a fun thread developing on the Collectors Universe message boards: collectors there are posting their worst miscut cards. Here’s my entry, a 1963 Topps Tom Bettis with -5/105 centering. It’s nowhere near as bad as the other cards posted, though. Check out the severely miscut ones.

Just out of curiosity, I did a little search for “miscut” on eBay. Most of the results are ordinary miscuts like my Bettis card, but at the moment there’s a half-and-half baseball card and a hockey card that shows parts of four cards. Here are the searches: baseball, hockey, football.

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