Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

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!

Yesterday I added the ability to search the Vintage Football Card Gallery for members of the Atlanta Falcons Ring of Honor. The Falcons established the Ring in 2004; you can see all of the inductees on the Falcons web site.

Atlanta entered the league in 1966, and the Gallery contains cards only up to 1976, so I have cards for only three Ring of Honor members: Claude Humphrey, Tommy Nobis, and Jeff Van Note. They are pictured here on their 1972 Sunoco Stamps.

What’s remarkable about these three players is the amount of time they were with the team. Humphrey played 14 seasons in the NFL, 11 of them with the Falcons. Nobis played 11 seasons, all with the Falcons. And Van Note played 17 seasons, all with the Falcons! None of the three has yet been elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, though Humphrey has been a finalist four times. I would like to see one of the old-timers get in before Deion Sanders, who was inducted into the Ring of Honor in 2010. Sanders spent just 5 of his 14 NFL seasons with the Falcons.

I am slowly identifying the members of all of the individual teams’ Halls of Fame in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. You can see the others I have finished on the Advanced Search page.

Yesterday a reader sent me this picture of 1972 Sunoco Stamp “Trader Wallets” and asked me if I knew their value. Since I had never seen them before, I had to say no. Sunoco did quite a job of marketing these stamps: in addition to the trader wallets, they also made stamp albums, team sheets, and update stamps available via mail order. I didn’t collect the stamps as a kid–I don’t remember there being any Sunoco or DX stations around my hometown–but if I had, I’m sure I would have wanted all of the accessories.

The two stamps in the photo marked “NEW PLAYER” are from the update set. The NEW PLAYER part detaches from the rest of the stamp along a perforation. You can see this in better detail in an earlier article.

I am still slowly adding pictures of the stamps to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. I am about halfway finished now–Atlanta through Miami!

Jim Copeland, who played guard and center for the Cleveland Browns from 1967 to 1974, passed away on June 4. Copeland played in two NFL Championship games: in 1967, against the Baltimore Colts, and in 1968, against the Minnesota Vikings. After his NFL career, Copeland served as athletic director at William and Mary, Utah, Virginia, and Southern Methodist. There is a nice photo of Copeland and a summary of his career at VirginaSports.com.

To my knowledge, Copeland did not appear on any football cards–not unusual for a lineman. He did, however, appear on the 1972 Sunoco Stamp pictured here. There are twenty-four players per team in the base 1972 Sunoco Stamp set–twice as many as in a typical card set of the time–so the set includes numerous players who never made it onto cards. As I wrote in an earlier article, the photos of several Browns in the Sunoco set, including Copeland, were from a mud game against the Colts.

As I reported earlier, a few weeks ago I bought a set of 1972 Sunoco Stamps, and now I’m scanning them for the Vintage Football Card Gallery. Yesterday I did the Cincinnati Bengals and Cleveland Browns. As I’ve said, overall, I’m not fond of the images used in the set. The stamps are small, and because the images are mostly action shots, you can’t see much of the players.

When scanning the Browns cards, though, I noticed that several of the action shots pictured the Browns in a mud game. Now these I like! I love watching weather games, be they in snow, rain, mud, or wind. For one thing, I prefer defensive battles to offensive shows, and bad weather slows the offenses down. For another, it’s just fun to see guys flopping around in the mud. To me, the weather is part of the game, and playing in a dome is playing something short of real football. I’ll take a mud game in Cleveland or a snow game in Buffalo over a dome game anytime.

As I wrote in an earlier post, it will take me several steps to add the 1972 Sunoco Stamps to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. Last night I skipped ahead and finished step #4: Add player information (college, etc.) to player database. Now when you do a search by college, the Sunoco Stamps are included in the search. (To search by college, see the Search by College page or the Advanced Search page.)

Now everything’s done except the scanning. I finished the Atlanta Falcons and Baltimore Colts, so I have just 24 teams to go. Whew.

In a comment on my last article about the stamps, Rob Lewis, the eBay seller who sold me the set, offered to send a copy of the order form for the update stamps to anyone who sends him an SASE. He also added some remarks about the update set. To see his comment, go to the article and scroll toward the bottom. Rob said the stamp album–which I still haven’t opened–contains 144 stamps, too. So I guess those 144 would be double-printed and a little easier to find? When I finish scanning–sometime next year–maybe I’ll summarize the different ways you could obtain the stamps, show which ones were replaced by updates, etc.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that I bought a set of 1972 Sunoco stamps on eBay. Well, I received them, and I’m very pleased. The stamps are just as described, and the seller packed them well: stars in sleeves and top loaders, and commons in team bags. The auction included a deluxe stamp album, and the seller also threw in a checklist and two stamps from the update set. (They’re the Norm Thompson and Dave Costa stamps pictured here.) It was great fun opening the package: I kept pulling out more and more stuff! The seller, rl1114, has lots of other items for sale, too, so check him out.

It will probably take me months to scan the stamps for the Vintage Football Card Gallery, so I’ll write blog entries for intermediate steps. So far I entered all of the players’ names, added personal information (college, position, hometown, etc.) for some of the players, and scanned the five pre-rookie stamps in the set so I could add them to my pre-rookie card page. Two of the pre-rookies are pictured here: Dan Dierdorf and Art Shell.

The stamp album is still in its original shrink wrap, but I’m curious, so I’ll probably have to unwrap it. Maybe that will be my next article on the set.

I mentioned in O is for Oddball that someday I would buy a set of 1972 Sunoco stamps. “Someday” came sooner than I thought: I picked up a set last night. I bought them mainly to add to the Vintage Football Card Gallery, and now I have a lot of work to do. Here’s the process:

1. Scan all 624 stamps and number the scans.
2. Create thumbnail pictures from the scans.
3. Enter all 624 stamps in my card database: stamp number, player, team, errors, etc.
4. Check for players I don’t have in my player database, look them up online, and add them: name, position, college, hometown, etc.
5. Back up the gallery site, in case I botch something.
6. Upload all the new stuff to the gallery site.
7. Update the various pages that refer to the set, such as the home page, O is for Oddball page, and pre-rookies page.
8. Test it all.
9. Write a blog post to announce the addition and say something about the stamps.

I’ve automated some of the process, so there’s not much thinking involved anymore. The scanning and data entry still take plenty of time, though. It’s a good thing I love the hobby!