Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

Happy Valentine’s Day! Last year I gave you Flowers, this year it’s Harts. Here we go:

First is Leon Hart, a Heisman Trophy winner and College Hall of Famer. Hart played eight seasons for the Detroit Lions, and he appeared on at least twelve football cards. His rookie card, the 1948 Leaf pictured here, was issued while he was still at Notre Dame. It is a high number and one of the key cards in the set.

Next is Pete Hart, who played for the New York Titans in the AFL’s inaugural season, 1960. (The Titans were renamed the Jets in 1963.) Hart appeared on a 1961 Fleer card and the 1961 Fleer Wallet Picture shown here.

Jim Hart was a quarterback for nineteen seasons in the NFL, all but one of them for the St. Louis Cardinals. He was a Pro Bowler for four straight seasons, 1974 to 1977. Hart appeared on a lot of football cards; the one pictured here is a 1968 Topps Stand-Up insert card.

Doug Hart played from 1964 to 1971 for the Green Bay Packers. He had the NFL’s longest interception return in 1969, an 85-yarder. The Packers had a lot of great players in the 1960s, of course, so Hart didn’t appear on a card until 1970. His 1970 Topps card is pictured here. He also made it onto a 1972 Sunoco Stamp, but he did not play in 1972.

Tommy Hart played thirteen seasons for the 49ers, Bears, and Saints. He appeared on several cards during his career; you can see most of them in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. His rookie card, a 1973 Topps, is pictured here.

Finally, Harold Hart played four seasons, 1974-1975 and 1977-1978, with the Raiders and Giants. Ironically, his only card is a 1976 Topps that shows him with Tampa Bay, but he didn’t play in 1976, and he never played a regular season game for Tampa Bay. According to his page at bucpower.com, the expansion Buccaneers acquired Hart in the 1976 Veteran Allocation Draft, but he hurt his knee in the pre-season and spent the year on injured reserve.

That’s all the Harts! Next year, Roseys?

The holiday made me think of the movie, and thinking of the movie made me wonder what NFL players were born on the Fourth of July. I found the full list at pro-football-reference.com; the eight who appear in the Vintage Football Card Gallery are shown below. Wish them a happy birthday!

Six-time Pro Bowler Erich Barnes was born on July 4, 1935. Barnes’s rookie card, shown here, is a 1960 Topps. Two-time Pro-Bowler Emerson Boozer was born on July 4, 1943; he is shown here on his 1971 Topps card. (Boozer also appeared on my all-party team.)

Two-time Pro Bowler Rosey Taylor was born on July 4, 1937; he is pictured here on his 1965 Philadelphia card. 1963 Pro-Bowler Lee Folkins was born on July 4, 1939; his rookie card, a 1964 Philadelphia, is shown here. (I heard from Mr. Folkins once. He told me that the signature on his 1964 Wheaties Stamp is not in his handwriting.)

Five-time Pro-Bowler Rick Casares was born on July 4, 1931. His rookie card, shown here, is a 1955 Bowman. Hall of Famer Floyd Little was born on July 4, 1942; he is shown here on his 1968 Topps Stand Up insert card.

1981 Pro Bowler Frank Lewis was born on July 4, 1947; his rookie card, a 1973 Topps, is shown here. And, finally, Fred Forsberg was born on July 4, 1944. I don’t believe Forsberg appeared on a card, but I do have his 1972 Sunoco Stamp.

Enjoy your picnics!

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!

In 1960, card companies started inserting little extras into packs of football cards: stickers, posters, tattoos, decals, punch-outs, and so on. The wrappers for the packs showed what insert was inside, as you can see on the wrapper page of the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

Not surprisingly, card collectors collect the inserts as well as the cards. (We collect the wrappers, too, of course–no part of the pack is wasted!) Most of the inserts, because they invited licking and sticking and pinning up and punching out, are harder to find than the regular cards. Some of them, such as 1968 Topps Stand Ups and 1970 Super Glossies, in my opinion are nicer than the regular cards.

Some of the inserts I know nothing about, except for their mention on the wrappers. The 1963 Fleer wrapper says there’s a Goofy Gag Card inside, and the 1964-1966 Philadelphia wrappers say the packs include comic tattoos. If anyone has pictures of those inserts, I would like to see them.

I know at least a little about the rest of the inserts from 1960 to 1971. Following is a short description of each.

1960 Fleer AFL Decals and 1960 Fleer College Pennant Decals

Fleer’s first football cards included a decal insert in each pack, either an AFL team logo or two college pennants. The two types of decals are considered two different sets, though to my knowledge they were distributed as if they were a single set. The 1960 Fleer football set was issued in a single series (in fact, all of them were printed on one sheet), and I believe both types of decals were included in packs of that series. The Vintage Football Card Gallery has scans of all of the decals in both the AFL Team set and the College Pennant set.

1960 Topps Metallic Stickers

In 1960, perhaps reacting to Fleer’s innovation, Topps included their first inserts in football card packs. The Topps inserts were metallic stickers representing both college and pro teams. Topps had the rights to print cards of NFL players in 1960, so the pro teams they put on their stickers were the NFL teams. Unlike the Fleer decals, the 1960 Topps college and pro stickers are considered part of a single set.

Pictured here are two of the stickers, Notre Dame and the St. Louis Cardinals. (1960, incidentally, was year the Cardinals moved to St. Louis.) The stickers don’t scan well, unfortunately, and any wear on the metallic finish appears in the scan as gray. If you imagine that the mottled gray is shiny, like chrome, you’ll get the picture. See the Vintage Football Card Gallery for the entire set of 1960 Topps Metallic Stickers.

1961 Fleer Magic Message Blue Inserts

I don’t know what the 1961 Fleer Magic Message Blue Inserts look like, but judging by the 1961 Fleer wrappers (see the Vintage Football Card Gallery’s wrapper page), the inserts were included in both series. Each insert contains a question about pro or college football, such as “Has the Rose Bowl always been played in California?” PSA’s set registry shows the complete set of questions in the set.

1961 Nu-Card Pennant Stickers

Each 1961 Nu-Card football pack included an insert that held two college pennant stickers. Two of the inserts are pictured here. You can find more pictures on eBay, and you can see the full list of pennant inserts in the PSA Set Registry. A lot of the colleges represented aren’t known for their football programs–e.g., Colby, Coker, and Kings Point–and these stickers might be the only place to see those colleges on anything resembling a football card.

Amazingly, there are only 80 cards in the 1961 Nu-Card football set, but there are 269 different sticker inserts! Many of the colleges are repeated, but they’re paired up differently to make different inserts.

1961 Topps Cloth Emblems (a.k.a. Flocked Stickers)

I have just one 1961 Topps Cloth Emblem sticker insert, the one pictured here. Bleah. It says Green Bay Packers, but it doesn’t picture a Packer, it doesn’t have a Packers logo, and it’s not even in Packers colors. The sticker is perforated so you can separate the “A” from the team emblem. I learned from an entry in the Topps Archives blog that this was so a kid could pull the letters off and use them to spell his name.

The full set of emblems–comprised of AFL, NFL, and college teams–is listed on the PSA registry site. The emblems for the NFL teams, NFL insignia, and most of the college teams came in 1961 Topps first series packs, which contained cards of NFL players. In PSA’s list, the first series emblems are the ones that were always paired with the same letter, e.g., “AIR FORCE FALCONS V.”

The emblems for the AFL teams, AFL insignia, and three more college teams came in second series packs, which contained cards of AFL players. Each second series emblem could be found paired with either of two letters. PSA’s list shows the two possible letters separated by a slash, e.g., “OREGON DUCKS C/N.” The letters that appeared on the stickers most often were the ones most commonly found in boys’ names. I don’t see Q and X at all, so Quincy and Xavier had to improvise with O’s and I’s.

A list of the first series emblems also appears on the back of the second 1961 Topps checklist, card #122. (Thanks to Pastor Scott for pointing this out in his comment below.) The second series emblems, oddly, do not appear on a checklist. Also see the discussion in C is for Checklists. For additional pictures of the emblems, see eBay.

1962 Topps Football Bucks

1962 Topps Bucks are play money that pictures players instead of presidents. The bills were folded once to fit into the pack, but fortunately they were not folded across the players’ faces. Until I add the Bucks to the Vintage Football Card Gallery, you can see more pictures on eBay and the set composition in the PSA set registry.

1965 Topps Magic Rub-Offs

1965 Topps Magic Rub-Offs are magic, and you can rub them off. Sorry, but I don’t have any, and that’s all I know about them. For these, also, you can find pictures on eBay and see the set composition in the PSA set registry.

1966 Topps Funny Rings

Pictured here is the “Head with One Eye” 1966 Topps Funny Ring. As the diagram shows, you can punch the ring out from the card and adjust it to fit your finger. The Funny Rings don’t have anything to do with football; Topps apparently just thought they would appeal to the 10-year-olds buying the cards. Strangely and unfortunately, the checklist for the Funny Rings is card number 15 in the 1966 Topps football card set, and it is considered necessary to complete the set. See the discussion in C is for Checklists. Also see eBay for more pictures of Funny Rings and the SGC set registry for the full list of rings.

1967 Topps Krazy Pennant Stickers

1967 Topps Krazy Pennant Stickers are also inserts that have little to do with football. Most of the team names on the pennants are Wacky Packages-style wordplays on real college and pro team names: Navel Academy, Michigan State Pen, and so on. A few are made up, such as Confused State and Diskotech. Fortunately, this time the checklist didn’t end up in the football card set. See eBay for more krazy pictures, and see the PSA set registry for the full krazy list.

1968 Topps Stand Ups

Packs of one of the two series of 1968 Topps football cards included “Stand Up” insert cards. This is my second-favorite insert set, with nice head-and-shoulders shots of the players. The cards are perforated such that you can punch them out and stand them up. As I wrote in D is for Defensive Players, Alex Karras is the only defensive player in the 22-card set, and the other 21 are offensive players. One of my previous posts provides more details on the set, and you can see the entire set of 1968 Topps Stand Ups in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

1969 Topps Stamps and Albums

1969 Topps Stamps came four to a card, and they were inserted with stamp albums in 1969 Topps packs. Nowadays we call the cards 4-in-1’s, because if a card still has its stamps intact, we wouldn’t think of pulling it apart. One of my previous blog entries, 1969 Topps 4-in-1 Oddities, has a description of the stamps and albums. The Vintage Football Card Gallery has pictures of the whole set of 1969 Topps stamps.

1970 Topps Super Glossies

1970 Topps Super Glossies came in second series 1970 Topps packs, and they are easily my favorite insert set. Depending on the day, they might even be my favorite of all football card sets. They are unlike any football cards printed before them, with bright colors, a glassy, almost wet-looking finish, and a hint of a 3-D effect. They are easy to find, but they are often off-center or have nicks on the back from the printing or packing machinery. The gloss is also susceptible to scuffing and scratches. You can see the whole 1970 Topps Super Glossy set in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

1971 Topps Game Cards

One series of 1971 Topps cards included small cards to be used for a game. Each game card pictures a player and indicates a number of yards gained or lost. The packs also included a piece of paper that unfolded into a diagram of a football field, and one of the possible game cards was a field marker. (There are way more field markers around than any of the player cards, so apparently Topps wanted to make sure you got one.)

Pulling the next card off your stack, you would move the field marker the distance indicated on the card. I don’t remember if any of us ever made it to the endzone, but I do remember that the game moved slowly and was kind of boring. We preferred the electric football games, where you set up all your players, flipped the switch, and watched all the players run to the corner of the field.

The game cards are often off-center, so it is a challenge to assemble a centered set. You can see all of the 1971 Game Cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

1968, 1970, and 1971 Topps Posters

Finally, Topps included posters in one series of cards in 1968, 1970, and 1971. (Topps issued two series of cards in each of those years, and in the non-poster series Topps inserted the Stand Ups, Super Glossies, and Game Cards discussed above.) I don’t collect posters, and since they’re not cards–or even card-sized–I haven’t tried to obtain them to put in the gallery. Check out eBay for examples of 1968 posters. You can see full sheets of 1970 and 1971 posters on the Topps Vault web site. PSA grades the 1968 and 1971 posters (they’re 5×7 inches), so the PSA site has checklists for 1968 and 1971.

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• Next: J is for Joe Namath–and the 1965 Topps Tall Boys
• All of the ABCs

Compared to quarterbacks, running backs, receivers, and even kickers, defensive players often got short shrift when the card companies chose the players to put on their cards. The 1968 Topps Stand Up insert set is an extreme example of the bias toward offensive players: in the 22-card set there is only one defensive player, Alex Karras. Even he might not have been included if the 1968 Lions had had an offensive star. Another example, the 1970 Topps Super Glossy set, is somewhat less unbalanced: it contains 25 offensive players, 7 defensive players, and 1 kicker.

Numerous Hall of Fame defensive players were in the league for years before appearing on a card. The most egregious example I can think of is Dick Lane. In 1952, his rookie year with the Rams, Lane had 14 interceptions, an NFL record that still stands–and he did it in 12 games! In 1954 he again led the league in interceptions, with 10, this time with the Cardinals. Despite his performance–and though the Cardinals were hardly flush with stars–Lane first appeared on a 1957 Topps card, and his next appearance was on a 1961 Fleer. (Lane’s biography on Wikipedia–assuming it is accurate–is fascinating. It says his mother found him in a Dumpster!)

Another Hall of Fame defensive player, Len Ford, played for 11 years but appeared on only two cards: his 1955 Bowman rookie card and a 1957 Topps card. He began his career in 1948 with the Los Angeles Dons of the AAFC, and he joined the Browns in 1950 when the AAFC folded and the Browns joined the NFL. No major company printed cards of AAFC players, but Bowman printed cards of NFL players every year from 1950 to 1955, and they finally included Ford in their last year.

At least four Lombardi-era Packers defensive players also made late rookie card appearances: Ray Nitschke began his career in 1958, and his rookie card is a 1963 Topps. Willie Davis also joined the team in 1958, and his rookie card is a 1964 Philadelphia. Herb Adderley joined the team in 1961, and his rookie card is also a 1964 Philadelphia–with his name misspelled, to boot. Willie Wood started in 1960, and his rookie card is a 1963 Topps.

Two Chiefs Hall of Fame defensive backs provide a final example: Willie Lanier joined the Chiefs in 1967, and his rookie card is a 1971 Topps. Emmitt Thomas joined in 1966, and his rookie card is a 1972 Topps.

Occasionally, when it took a while for a defensive player to appear on a card from a major company, the player would appear first on a “pre-rookie” card in a regional or oddball set. All four of the Packers mentioned above had pre-rookie cards in the 1961 Lake to Lake Packers set. Hall of Famers Bob Lilly, Jim Johnson, and Larry Wilson all had pre-rookie cards in the 1962 Post Cereal set. And as I wrote in a previous post, Rams star Ed Meador appeared on 1959 Bell Brand, 1960 Bell Brand, and 1962 Post Cereal cards before his 1963 Topps rookie card was issued. Another long-time Ram, Jack Pardee, whose rookie card is a 1964 Philadelphia, also appeared in the Bell Brand and Post Cereal sets.

Changing the subject a bit, it is worth noting that until 1959, football cards did not distinguish between offensive and defensive positions when there was ambiguity. For example, if a player’s card said “end,” he could have been either a receiver or a defensive end. If it said “back,” he could have been either a running back or a defensive back. Pictured here is an example: Jack Butler was a defensive back, but his 1957 Topps rookie card just says “back.” (This, by the way, is another late rookie card. Butler started his career with the Steelers in 1951.) Perhaps this was a vestige of the time when players played both offense and defense, and a back on offense would also have been a back on defense. Whatever the reason, because of the ambiguity, I probably still have some defensive players listed as offensive players in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. Occasionally a kind person sends me a correction.

• Previous: C is for Checklists
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• All of the ABCs