The helmet-in-hands pose appears to have been used mostly in the 1960′s. That was after facemasks got substantial enough to obscure the players’ faces, but it was before Topps started airbrushing logos away in the 1970′s. The photographers for some teams in particular favored the pose: it is used for several of the 1963 Topps Packers cards, for instance, and for most of their 1969 Topps cards.

Below are a few examples: 1968 Topps Jerry Logan, 1966 Philadelphia Irv Cross, 1964 Philadelphia Guy Reese, 1969 Topps Alex Karras, 1963 Topps Lou Michaels, and 1967 Philadelphia Bob Hayes. For more, see a thread on the topic that I started on the Collector’s Universe message boards. I posted a bunch of pictures there before the discussion, um, went south.