Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

Two Canadian Football League Hall of Famers, Ron Atchison and Frank Rigney, passed away this week. Both players appeared on numerous CFL football cards. I am not an expert on CFL cards (or on the CFL, for that matter), so I took the opportunity to do some web searching and learn a little.

A tribute to Ron Atchison on the Vancouver Sun web site says that he walked-on to the Saskatchewan training camp in 1952, and he ended up playing on the Roughriders defensive line for seventeen years. In that span, the team won one Grey Cup (CFL Championship), in 1966. In one playoff game on an icy field, the resourceful Atchison wore his Hush Puppies for better traction–and they worked!

Atchison apparently did not play college football, but prior to trying out with Saskatchewan, he played for the Saskatoon Hilltops in the Canadian Junior Football League. The league is still in operation, and, according to its Wikipedia page, it serves as a sort of minor league for the CFL. There are some fun team names among the league’s current nineteen teams, including the Big Kahuna Rams, the Chilliwack Huskers, the London Beefeaters, and the Windsor AKO Fratmen.

The card pictured here is Atchison’s 1965 Topps CFL card. 1965 Topps is probably my favorite CFL set, since the cards are colorful and distinct from their NFL counterparts. (Some CFL cards, such as 1958 Topps, 1962 Post, and 1968 O-Pee-Chee, look just like the NFL cards from those years, so to me they’re not very interesting.) Atchison appeared on many more cards, and although I don’t yet have them, you can see a nice assortment on eBay.

Like Atchison, Frank Rigney spent his entire CFL career with the same team, playing ten years on the Winnipeg Blue Bombers offensive line. In those ten years, Winnipeg played in five Grey Cups and won four of them. Rigney was a CFL West All Star in seven of his ten seasons. He played college football for Iowa, and he was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles, but I did not find anything that said he reported to the Eagles training camp.

Pictured here is Rigney’s 1962 Topps CFL card, half of a panel he shared with teammate Gordie Rowland. The two-card panels in this set are the size of standard single cards. Rigney appeared on many more cards, as well as on some Nalley’s Coins, and you can see examples of them on eBay.

Rigney’s obituary on the CBC News web site provides a nice summary of his career.

In any vintage set, the cards of players and coaches who have been elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame tend to be more popular–and hence more valuable–than the other cards in the set. Other factors come into play, of course: the relative scarcity of the cards, the positions of the players, the players’ teams, and whether a player was a star or a superstar. But if all else is equal, a Hall of Famer’s card will generally sell for more than a non-Hall of Famer’s. Recognizing this, hobby publications and web sites often use the abbreviation HOF to indicate that a player is in the Hall of Fame.

You can find the full list of Hall of Famers, naturally, on the Pro Football Hall of Fame web site. I referred to that site often as I built my own web sites, since most vintage cards were printed before my time, and I didn’t know all of the players who had been inducted. The biographies of the inductees added to my appreciation of the cards, and I recommend browsing through them on the Hall of Fame site.

A popular–and challenging–endeavor is to collect the rookie cards of Hall of Fame players. As I am writing this, 96 collectors have registered their sets in PSA’s Pro Football Hall of Fame Rookie Players set registry. One of the registered sets, JasP24’s NFL Rookie HOFers, includes images for nearly all of the cards in the set, and it is definitely worth a look. If you have the time, there is also a long discussion about the set and potential new inductees on the Collectors Universe Message Board. Each year, the Hall of Fame’s Senior Committee nominates two senior candidates for induction into the Hall, and there is always a lot of speculation as to who the nominees will be. (As I wrote in another post, this year’s nominees are Chris Hanburger and Les Richter.)

Because the rookie cards of Hall of Famers command a high premium, the rookie cards of potential Hall of Famers command a premium, as well. Another set in the PSA Set Registry, the Future HOF Rookie Players – Senior set, holds the rookie cards of the senior players who have the best chance of being elected to the Hall of Fame. Other people have their ideas, too: see my earlier post called More Pro Football Hall of Fame Candidate Web Sites. If you like to speculate, you can invest in the cards of these Hall of Fame hopefuls and wait to see if your players get elected. Don’t rely on the price guides to tell you how much to pay, though: the actual prices paid for high-grade Hall of Fame rookies and potential Hall of Fame rookies are often multiple times what the price guides say.

Not everyone in the Hall of Fame appears on a vintage card, unfortunately. After National Chicle released the first major football card set in 1935, there were no more major issues until Bowman and Leaf released cards in 1948. Many Hall of Fame players, coaches, and owners from the early days of the NFL were thus left out. The 1955 Topps All-American set, which includes players and coaches from years past (see A is for All-American), made up for some of the omissions, and that is one reason for its popularity.

The old-time Hall of Famers who went card-less in their league days finally appeared in some more recent Hall of Fame issues, such as the 1963 Stancraft playing cards and the 1974 and 1975 Immortal Roll sets issued by Fleer. Dave Witmer, author of the 1st and Goal blog, features some of the recent issues in his Hall of Fame Spotlight. The Immortal Roll cards are also easy to find on eBay. (Because these Hall of Fame sets were not major issues, a card from one of the sets is never considered a rookie card, even if it is the person’s first card. See R is for Rookie Cards for further explanation.)

While the Pro Football Hall of Fame is most significant to collectors, some individual teams also have halls of fame, and some collectors base their collections on those. The PSA Set Registry includes a Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame set, for example, and in it are the rookie cards of the members of the Packers team hall of fame. If your favorite football team has a hall or a wall or a ring of fame, you could choose that to be the focus of your collection.

On a closely related topic, H is also for Heisman Trophy Winners. Like cards of Hall of Fame players, cards of Heisman winners command a premium over cards of other players. And, as you might expect, PSA’s set registry includes a set for the rookie cards of Heisman Winners.

Whether you collect Hall of Famers, Heisman winners, rookie cards, members of your favorite team, or some combination, the Advanced Search page of the Vintage Football Card Gallery provides a way to search for them. It doesn’t include quite all of the old sets yet, but hopefully I’ll get there soon.

For details on any of the Hall of Fame rookie cards shown here, just pick the card to go to its gallery page.

• Previous: G is for Grading
• Next: I is for Inserts
• All of the ABCs

Dick LeBeau and Floyd Little were recently named the 2010 senior finalists for induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame site provides biographies for the two stars and describes the process for choosing the senior nominees.

LeBeau’s rookie card is a 1965 Philadelphia, pictured here. Like many defensive stars, LeBeau played several years before a card company decided to print a card of him. LeBeau entered the NFL in 1959, and he finally got his rookie card in his seventh season.

Little’s rookie card is a 1968 Topps, released in his second year. Little appeared on a lot of cards in his career, including four in the 1972 Topps set alone.

Judging by recent history, it is likely that at least one of the two senior nominees will be elected to the Hall. The Hall of Fame’s senior nominees page shows that at least one senior candidate has been elected each year since 1998. Since 2004, when the senior committee began nominating two players per year, nine of the twelve nominees have been elected. One, Bob Hayes, was not elected in 2004, but he was given a second chance and elected in 2009.

• Search for Dick LeBeau cards: Nearmint’s Cards, eBay
• Search for Floyd Little cards: Nearmint’s Cards, eBay