April 8th, 2011 |
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Player Deaths
Joe Heap, who played halfback for the New York Giants in 1955, passed away on April 6. According to an article about him on the Allstate Sugar Bowl web site, Heap left the Giants after one season to serve in the U.S. Air Force. Prior to joining the Giants, Heap starred at Notre Dame. The Sugar Bowl article includes a nice account of his college career.
Though he spent only one season in the NFL, Heap appeared on an NFL football card, the 1955 Bowman card pictured here. (The 1955 Bowman set is the only vintage set I can think of that identified rookies on the fronts of the cards.) I believe that the image on Heap’s card was originally a black-and-white photo of him in his Notre Dame uniform, and that Bowman added the Giants colors. The uniform he is wearing on his card appears to be the same one he is wearing in the photo in the Sugar Bowl article noted above. Also, according to his page at pro-football-reference.com, Heap wore number 48 with the Giants.
June 4th, 2010 |
Published in
Football Card Trivia
I started to write an article today about coaches on football cards, but then I realized that a lot of coaches appeared on football cards–too many to cover in one article. So I thought I’d break the subject into blog-sized pieces. This is the first.
Knute Rockne was the first coach to appear on a football card–or at least he’s the first I can think of. Pictured here is Rockne’s rookie card, from the 1933 Goudey Sport Kings multi-sport set. This is one of three football cards in the set, the others being Red Grange and Jim Thorpe. (The Virtual Card Collection web site shows all of the cards in the Sport Kings set.)
Until today, when I visited his official web site, I hadn’t realized that Rockne died in 1931, two years before his Sport Kings card was issued. He was only 43 when he was killed in a plane crash in Kansas, on his way to Los Angeles to assist with “The Spirit of Notre Dame,” a movie about–what else?–Notre Dame football. According to his Wikipedia page, “Rockne was…shrewd enough to recognize that intercollegiate sports had a show-business aspect. Thus he worked hard promoting Notre Dame football so as to make it financially successful.” His IMDB page shows that he worked on a number of short films released in 1931.
Rockne was also the second coach to appear on a football card, this one in the 1935 National Chicle set. His is definitely the odd card in this set, since the rest of the National Chicle cards show NFL players of the day. The image on Rockne’s National Chicle card also appeared on his 1955 Topps All-American card.
July 31st, 2009 |
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ABCs of Vintage Football Cards
The 1955 Topps All-American set, 100 cards picturing college All-Americans through 1955, is probably the most popular vintage football card set. The key to its popularity is its player selection: it includes sixteen hall-of-famers, including five rookie cards; eleven Heisman trophy winners, including five rookie cards; Notre Dame legends Knute Rockne and the Four Horsemen; and even a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Byron “Whizzer” White. It is also an attractive set, with a color picture of the player in the foreground and a black-and-white action picture in the background. The PSA Set Registry provides evidence of its popularity: at the time of this writing, collectors had registered 85 sets of All-Americans, far more than any other vintage set.
Prior to 1955, Topps had printed two other sets of cards of college players, 1950 Felt Backs and 1951 Magic cards, but those sets were limited to current players of the time, and they are not as attractive as the 1955 set. The 1950 Felt Backs are downright homely, but the set does include the rookie cards of Joe Paterno, Darrell Royal, and a couple of pro football hall-of-famers. The 1951 Topps Magic cards are more attractive, but the set holds only one significant rookie card: Heisman winner Vic Janowicz. In 1955, Topps played catch-up, including stars from decades earlier who had never appeared on cards before. The result: lots of rookie cards of famous players.
The 1955 All-American set began a run of annual Topps football sets that continues to this day. Topps dominated the football card market until 1989, when Score and ProSet introduced superior products. From 1968 to 1988, Topps had practically no competition in the market, and it showed: most of the cards they printed in the 1970′s and 1980′s were dull and nondescript compared to their early offerings.
A 1955 Topps All-American page on the Boston College web site–apparently a student project–provides other interesting facts about the set: detailed descriptions of the cards, errors, and players who went on to fame outside of football.
