Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

Error card collectors, here are two more error cards that are not marked in my Beckett catalog: Bob Hendren’s 1948 and 1949 Leaf cards have his name spelled “Hendreen.” Hendren’s name is also misspelled on the back of his 1948 card, but Leaf corrected the spelling on the back in 1949.

Tip of the day: when you search eBay for a card with a misspelled name, search for both the correct and incorrect spellings. Some sellers use the correct spelling of the player’s name, and some use the name on the card.

For more information on the 1948 and 1949 Leaf sets, see L is for Leaf. To see all of the error cards in a certain set, use the Advanced Search page of the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

Error card collectors, here’s one you might have missed: I noticed last week that Carl Brettschneiders’ last name is misspelled on his 1958 Topps rookie card. The error is not identified in my Beckett catalog. Topps got it right on Brettschneider’s later cards.

I have added the Brettschneider to the long list of error cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. If you know of others I haven’t marked, send me an email.

It’s Trivia Tuesday! Just pick the “Answer” links to see the answers.

1. Who scored the first field goal in Super Bowl history? Answer
2. What member of the Philadelphia Eagles Honor Roll appeared in both M*A*S*H the movie and M*A*S*H the television show? Answer
3. What Pro Football Hall of Famer, who played for the Chicago Cardinals and Los Angeles Rams, won two medals in track in the 1952 Olympics? Answer
4. What Boston Patriot was the American Football League’s top scorer in five of its ten seasons? Answer
5. What is the error on Doug Atkins’s 1960 Topps card, shown here? Answer
6. What former Harvard player, who appeared on a 1955 Topps All-American football card, was governor of Massachusetts from 1963 to 1965? Answer
7. What Dallas Cowboy was the first defensive player to be named Super Bowl MVP? Answer

Like these? See my trivia questions from past weeks.

I discovered two more reversed images today, these on the 1961 Fleer Wallet Pictures of Dan McGrew and Chris Burford. It is easy to see the errors when you put the pictures alongside the players’ regular issue 1961 Fleer football cards. Fleer used the same images for all of the players who appear in both the Wallet Pictures set and the regular Fleer set, but they happened to get these two backward. They made lots more errors on the Wallet Photos, too, mostly misspelling the players’ names on the backs.

These are the ten and eleventh reversed images I have identified in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. All of them are pictured on the Gallery’s Reversed Images page.

As I have had time, I have been adding trivia for cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. As I wrote in a previous article, PSA’s set registry allows collectors to add comments for cards that they register, and I like the information that some collectors have entered. I decided to try my hand at it, and it’s been fun: I’ve found lots of interesting tidbits about the cards and players. For examples, see my page of Doak Walker cards. Did you know that Walker was married to an Olympic skier?

Anyway, yesterday I was searching for trivia for 1950 Bowman football cards, and I got to card number 3, Bob Nowasky. Oddly, my search for “Bob Nowasky” turned up football cards, but nothing else. Knowing that cards sometimes have the players’ names misspelled, I tried “Nowaski” instead. Nothing–or at least nothing related to football. Then I tried “Nowaskey,” and bingo, I got lots of hits. So I had my trivia: Nowaskey’s 1950 Bowman card is an error card; it has his name misspelled. I am probably not the first person to notice–I’ll bet Nowaskey’s mom did!–but I haven’t seen the error documented anywhere else.

Pictured here is the front of the card, which shows Nowaskey in Baltimore Colts green. (Green, you ask? That’s another story.) His name is misspelled on the back.

Like knowing about errors like this? Well, in case you weren’t aware, you can search the Vintage Football Card Gallery for all of the error cards, or you can combine that search with others, say to find all of the error cards in the 1960 Topps set. Just go to the Advanced Search page and search away.

I’ll bet I’ve looked at Del Shofner’s 1960 Topps football card a hundred times, and yesterday I finally noticed that his image on the card is reversed. Here it is alongside his 1961 Topps card. The images on the two cards appear to be from the same photo session, and if you compare the numbers and lines on Shofner’s jersey, you can see that the image on the 1960 card is backward. Shofner wore number 29 for his four seasons with the Rams.

At least three more 1960 Topps football cards also have reversed images: Bill Wade, Doug Atkins, and Frank Varrichione. I have seen a few more examples in other sets, but the 1960 Topps set has the most, by far. I thought that maybe there was a pattern to the errors on the uncut sheet, but the cards were not together on the sheet. I guess someone working at Topps in 1960 simply wasn’t paying attention.

As I wrote last week, one of my readers pointed out that the player on the cover of the San Francisco 49ers 1969 Topps Mini-Card Album is Joe Walton, and that the same image appeared in the inset photo of Walton’s 1962 Topps football card. This made me curious, so I checked to see if other inset photos from 1962 Topps cards had been reused on 1969 Mini-Card Albums. Sure enough, I found a few:

First, the image of Bart Starr on the Green Bay Packers Mini-Card Album appeared in the inset of Starr’s 1962 Topps card.

Next, the image of John Unitas on the Baltimore Colts Mini-Card Album was also used in the inset photo of Zeke Bratkowski’s 1962 Topps card. Topps changed Unitas’s number 19 to Bratkowski’s number 12 on the 1962 Topps card, as I noted in an earlier article.

The image on the Minnesota Vikings Mini-Card Album also appeared in the inset photo of Don Perkins’s 1962 Topps card, but the player’s number is different. I’m guessing that the image was altered for the 1962 card, so the player probably isn’t Perkins.

The image on the Denver Broncos Mini-Card Album is the same one used in the inset photo on Ollie Matson’s 1962 Topps card, but again, the player’s number is different. Matson was number 33 with the Rams, so it appears that the image on his 1962 card was altered. Does anyone recognize the player?

Finally, the image on the Washington Redskins Mini-Card Album is the same as the inset on John Aveni’s 1962 Topps card. Again, the player’s number appears to have been changed on the 1962 Topps card. I believe that the player is Dick James, who wore number 47 for the Redskins in 1961.

Given that there are so many altered jersey numbers on the 1962 Topps cards, I wonder how many of the inset photos actually picture the right player. Not many, I’ll bet.

While doing some web searches the other day, I ran across a long page of photos of Bo McMillin. McMillin was an All-American quarterback at Centre College in 1919 and 1921, and he played a few games in the NFL with the Milwaukee Badgers and Cleveland Indians. After his playing days, he had a long coaching career, including four seasons as an NFL head coach. There is a short biography of McMillin on the Centre College web site.

Reading the commentary in the long page of photos, I learned that McMillin’s name is misspelled on both his 1955 Topps All-American card and his 1926 Spalding Champions card. It is spelled correctly in my Beckett price guides, but the cards are not noted as errors, so the errors were news to me. I also learned from the photo page that the image on McMillin’s 1926 Spalding card is not McMillin, but another player. If you put the card next to one of his other photos, it is clear that the Spalding card pictures someone else. Does anyone recognize the impostor?

Having learned about the mistakes, I fixed the spelling of McMillin’s name on my two web sites, noted the errors on his individual cards, and added his 1926 Spalding card to my page of football cards that picture the wrong player. Whew!

Last week I added 1961 Kahn’s Wieners cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. There are 36 cards in this Kahn’s set, with 32 being Browns and Steelers. Kahn’s was (and still is) based in Cincinnati, and Cleveland and Pittsburgh were the closest pro teams at the time.

The other four players in the set–Frank Varrichione, Will Renfro, Jimmy Orr, and Joe Lewis–were with either Cleveland or Pittsburgh the previous season. It appears that Kahn’s intended to make the set all Browns and Steelers, but these players moved, so Kahn’s simply changed the teams on the backs of their cards.

Two of the cards in the set, Tom Tracy and Larry Krutko, have their images swapped. This is especially unfortunate for Krutko, because I believe that this is his only football card. (For more old football cards that picture the wrong player, see my Mistaken Identities page.)

The set includes a pre-rookie card of Gene Hickerson. Hickerson had more pre-rookie cards than any other Hall of Famer I can think of: he appeared in the 1959 through 1962 Kahn’s sets, and on a 1962 Post Cereal card.

Thanks again to Mike Ford, who provided images for several of the Kahn’s sets.

Last week, while I was scanning 1969 Glendale Stamps for the Vintage Football Card Gallery, I noticed that the Bob Griese and Mel Farr stamps have reversed images. The players’ jersey numbers were what clued me in: Griese wore number 12 for the Dolphins, and Farr wore number 24 for the Lions. I’ll bet that there are more reversed images in the set, but most of the players’ jersey numbers are not visible, so it is hard to tell.

There are several other reversed images in the Gallery: Charley Trippi on one variation of his 1948 Kellogg’s Pep card; Bill Wade, Doug Atkins, and Frank Varrichione on their 1960 Topps cards, and Dick Butkus and Joe Namath on variations of their 1972 NFLPA Vinyl Stickers.