Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

Card companies love quarterbacks, and quarterbacks appear on more than their share of vintage cards. This isn’t surprising, since quarterbacks are typically the most recognizable members of their teams. Even considering that, at times the card companies have gone a little quarterback crazy. As I wrote in other posts, the only two Packers in the 1953 Bowman set are quarterbacks, and there are four Bears quarterbacks in the 1957 Topps set.

One set that isn’t quarterback crazy is the 1935 National Chicle set. Only 2 of the 36 National Chicle cards are quarterbacks. In 1935, football was still primarily a running game, with rushing attempts outnumbering passing attempts 2.5 to 1, and rushing yards exceeding passing yards 1.5 to 1. By 1948, when the next major football card issues were released, these ratios had changed dramatically, and total passing yards for the league had surpassed total rushing yards. Football cards reflected this shift: the 1948 Bowman set, for example, includes 17 quarterbacks for 10 teams. The black-and-white “Pitchin’” Paul Christman card shown here is from the 1948 Bowman set.

As the passing game emerged, quarterbacks also became more photogenic. On nearly all old quarterback cards, the quarterback is holding the ball, and in most cases, he’s ready to pass. He’s often straining to throw it past imaginary defenders: running, jumping, and otherwise contorting himself. Sometimes an artist would even enhance the contortions. Check out John Huarte’s 1965 Topps card–he looks like a puppet!

Quarterbacks also have lots of stats, of course, and fans love stats. I actually remember being disappointed as a kid when I turned over a lineman’s card and didn’t see any stats. Quarterbacks have relatively long careers, also, and that makes for plenty of material for the backs of the cards.

Interestingly, it seems that the card companies were more apt to put unproven quarterbacks on cards than players from other positions. In 1957, for example, Topps printed a card of Cardinals quarterback Paul Larson, but not one of Lamar MaHan, who had been the Cardinals’ starting quarterback for three years. McHan remained the starter in 1957, and Larson threw just 14 passes. In 1960, Fleer printed another card of Larson, this time with the Raiders. The Raiders’ starting quarterback in 1960 were Tom Flores and Babe Parilli, but they did not appear in the 1960 Fleer set. Larson appeared in only one game, and he did not throw a pass.

By contrast, defensive players (see D is for Defensive Players) and offensive linemen usually had to play well for a few years before the card companies would put them on cards. I suppose that the card companies, in order to maximize sales, simply printed cards of players with the greatest name recognition. Quarterbacks might be well-known right out of college, while other players in other positions needed to play in the pros for a while before becoming household names.

To query the Vintage Football Gallery for all of the quarterbacks from your favorite team, just use an address of this form: http://www.footballcardgallery.com/position/quarterback/team/Washington+Redskins/. This works for other positions, as well.

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To a card collector, “oddballs” are collectible items that have some characteristics of cards–small size, two dimensions, pictures of players, team logos, and so on–but are not traditional trading cards. Some examples are coins, bottle caps, cap liners, discs, stamps, stickers, patches, pins, and playing cards. Many of them came on or in packages of food. Some were regional and featured a particular team.

I distinguish oddball items from inserts (see I is for Inserts), though some inserts also fit the description above. Why? Well, since inserts came in packs of cards, most of them are familiar to collectors, and there are enough of them to group them into a category of their own. Oddball items are the unfamiliar, the hard to categorize, the things that go under “miscellaneous.” They have brand names you might never have heard of, like Stancraft and Drenks and Salada.

Any number of items can be considered oddball, and I’ll list just a few here. I don’t collect many of them–you have to draw a line somewhere–so I’ll mostly provide links to other places. The only oddballs I have in my collection are playing cards and stamps, which aren’t too far removed from trading cards.

Playing Cards

I know of two sets of vintage playing cards with images of football players: 1963 Stancraft and 1973 Nebraska Cornhuskers. Both came in full decks, and I’m sure their creators did not intend for the decks to be broken up. Broken up they were, though, and it is easier to find individual cards than full decks.

1963 Stancraft playing cards were released in conjunction with the opening of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. 48 of the 54 cards in the deck–all but the aces and jokers–picture star players and coaches. Oddly, though there were 17 inductees in the Hall of Fame’s class of 1963, only 9 of the 17 appear in the Stancraft deck. Of the 48 players and coaches in the deck, 37 eventually made it into the Hall.

The Stancraft playing cards were issued as a two-deck bridge set: one deck with red backs and one deck with green backs. Both decks picture the same players and coaches. You can see a full deck of 1963 Stancraft Playing Cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

Another set of playing cards, 1973 Nebraska Playing Cards, picture Nebraska players and coaches from that year’s team. Coach Tom Osborne is the ace of spades, and Memorial Stadium appears on the two jokers. At least twenty-four of the players in the set went on to play professionally. You can see the whole Nebraska playing card set in the Vintage Football Card Gallery and read about them in one of my blog articles.

Stamps

I am familiar with three sets of vintage football stamps that were not inserts: 1964 Wheaties, 1969 Glendale, and 1972 Sunoco. Each of the sets had an accompanying album into which you could stick the stamps. I recently added the 1964 Wheaties stamps to the Vintage Football Card Gallery, and you can read about them in an earlier blog post. (One of the Wheaties stamps, Raymond Berry, is pictured here.) I don’t yet have the 1969 Glendale stamps, but that didn’t stop me from writing a little about them, too.

I don’t have 1972 Sunoco stamps yet, either, but they are plentiful on eBay. They appear to have been distributed both in packs and on sheets. The base set is huge: 12 offensive and 12 defensive players for each of the 26 teams, for a total of 624 stamps. On top of that, Sunoco released an 82-stamp update set. Among the 706 stamps are numerous players who never appeared on cards. I like seeing unfamiliar players on cards (or on oddballs), so one of these days I’ll buy a set of the Sunoco stamps. PSA’s set registry shows the composition of both the base set and the update set.

Discs

1976 was the year of the disc. Five sets of football discs were printed that year: Coke Bears Discs, Crane (potato chip) Discs, Buckman Discs, Saga Discs, and Pepsi Discs.

1976 is newer than I typically deal with, and I have never had much interest in the discs, so I don’t know a lot about them. I assume that the same company printed all of them, since I don’t know of any others printed before or since 1976. A friend sent me a couple of Crane Discs once; they’re about the size of a beer coaster. Pictured here is one of them, Charley Taylor.

The PSA registry shows all of the players in the disc sets, and you can see lots of examples on eBay.

• 1976 Buckmans Discs: composition, examples
• 1976 Coke Bears Discs: composition, examples
• 1976 Crane Discs: composition, examples
• 1976 Pepsi Discs: composition, examples
• 1976 Saga Discs: composition, examples

Other Oddballs

As I said at the top, I don’t own many oddball items, and my knowledge of them is limited. Here are a few more, along with links to the set compositions and some examples. As I learn more about them, I’ll give these oddballs sections of their own. If I am missing your favorite, let me know and I’ll add it here.

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Here is the latest trivia question.

Question #4: What do the four players pictured on these 1958 Topps football cards have in common?

Scroll down slowly; the answer is after the sponsored links. For more information on a card, click on it or hold your cursor over it.

Sponsored Links

Answer: All of them were out of football in 1959, but each of them came back to join an AFL team in 1960. Carmichael went to the Broncos, Blanda and Waller to the Oilers, and Wells to the Patriots.

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I pick up bits of trivia here and there, and I thought I’d pass them on via a quiz. The questions will be about the players, not the football cards, so you don’t have to be a card collector to answer them. (You can probably find some of the answers on cards, though.)

So here we go, Question #1: What do the five players pictured here have in common? Scroll down slowly; the answer is after the strategically placed sponsored links.

For more information on a card, click on it or hold your cursor over it.

Sponsored Links

Answer: They share the record for the most touchdown passes in a game, with 7. Nope, no Dan Marino, Brett Favre, Tom Brady, or Peyton Manning! Source: NFL Passing Records page of nfl.com.

• Sid Luckman, Chi. Bears vs. N.Y. Giants, Nov. 14, 1943
• Adrian Burk, Philadelphia vs. Washington, Oct. 17, 1954
• George Blanda, Houston vs. N.Y. Titans, Nov. 19, 1961
• Y.A. Tittle, N.Y. Giants vs. Washington, Oct. 28, 1962
• Joe Kapp, Minnesota vs. Baltimore, Sept. 28, 1969

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