Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

Whenever I see a copy of Bob DeMarco’s 1964 Philadelphia football card, I am puzzled. The image on the card was obviously airbrushed, but I don’t know why the card company would have airbrushed it. DeMarco had been with the Cardinals since his rookie season, 1961, so they wouldn’t have needed to change him out of another NFL team’s colors.

One possibility is that the photo was from DeMarco’s college days (he played at Dayton), and the card company wanted to cover his college jersey. (For an example of that, see John Brockington’s 1972 Topps cards.) That seems unlikely, though, since 1964 was DeMarco’s fourth year out of college, and they should have had a photo of him in a Cardinals uniform by then.

Another possibility is that DeMarco had been wearing a white Cardinals jersey for his photo, like the one on his 1966 card, but Philadelphia wanted all of the Cardinals in the set to be wearing red. The problem with that theory is that there are other players in the set whose jerseys don’t match the rest of their team, and their images haven’t been airbrushed. Tommy McDonald, for example, played for the Cowboys in 1964, but he is pictured still in Eagles green, not Cowboys blue.

At least one other image in the 1964 Philadelphia set appears to have been airbrushed, also, though not as badly: on Dick Schafrath’s card, it looks like Schafrath’s jersey was painted on. I can’t explain that one, either, unless it was to hide the neck roll he is shown wearing on his later Philadelphia cards.

Anyone else have a theory to explain the airbrushing?

Most of us have taken photos in which our subjects appear to have trees growing out of their heads. We shouldn’t feel bad: the professional photographers for sports cards sometimes miss things in the background, too. Here are a few cards with funny stuff happening behind the players.

First we have Bart Starr’s 1961 Fleer card. A stadium light in the background makes Bart appear to have a knob on his head, and there’s a little man with a machine gun shooting Bart in the neck. Fleer also got the Packers’ logo backward, as they did on all of the Packers cards in 1961.

Next up is a 1965 Philadelphia Bob DeMarco card, in which Bob appears to have a few extra appendages. Bob doesn’t seemed bothered by it.

Finally, we have a 1960 Topps Leo Nomellini card, with a couple of Leo’s Lilliputian teammates praising him. Leo, focused on the camera and accustomed to adulation, is ignoring them.