Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

Today I added the eight 1951 Berk Ross football cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. The 1951 Berk Ross set is a 72-card multi-sport set, with baseball, football, basketball, hockey, and several minor sports all represented. You can find a checklist for the entire set at oddlyquirky.com.

Pictured here is the Doak Walker card. Walker was another member of the great Lions teams of the 1950s, and he is one of the few Heisman Trophy winners who have been inducted into the hall of fame. He retired after only six years in the league, hanging it up after the 1955 season.

Yesterday I added 1968 Topps Stand Up cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. These were insert cards in 1968 Topps packs, and there are 22 cards in the full set. Each card is perforated around the player’s head and shoulders such that you can punch the player out from the back and stand the card up. Of course, cards that have been punched out are now worth far less that those that remain intact, so it’s best if the cards’ original owners didn’t have any fun with them.

Topps choose a curious group of players for this set. The set contains at most one player per team, and Topps chose Jim Grabowski to represent the Packers over Bart Starr and Ray Nitschke. They also chose Willie Richardson over John Unitas, Jack Concannon over Gale Sayers and Dick Butkus, and Curtis McClinton over Len Dawson. (Topps did feature puzzles of Bart Starr and Len Dawson on the backs of the some of the regular 1968 cards, though.)

There is only one defensive player in the set, Alex Karras. And oddly, Homer Jones appeared in this set but not in the regular set of 1968 Topps cards.

As the About page says, the Vintage Football Card Gallery is a reference site. The cards in the gallery are not for sale, but I do have lots of cards for sale on my Nearmint’s Vintage Football Cards site.

You can search the gallery for your favorite set, team, player, or college. To do complex searches, such as “Show all the rookie cards of Hall of Fame players named Bob,” try the Advanced Search page.

On the Site Map you will find links to other miscellaneous pages. Among them:

• A page that shows a bunch of cards that picture the wrong player
• A page showing lots of vintage football card wrappers
• Interactive team cards: 1959 Topps New York Giants, 1961 Topps Green Bay Packers, 1963 Topps Dallas Cowboys, 1964 Topps Oakland Raiders, and 1967 Philadelphia Cleveland Browns
• Puzzles of Bart Starr, Len Dawson, and Fran Tarkenton, assembled from the backs of 1968 and 1969 Topps football cards
• Examples of pre-rookie cards, minor issues that were printed before players’ commonly accepted rookie cards
• “Virtual” uncut sheets of cards: 1948 Bowman, 1958 Topps, 1959 Topps, 1960 Fleer, 1960 Topps, 1961 Fleer, 1962 Topps, 1963 Fleer, 1966 Philadelphia, 1968 Topps, 1969 Topps, and 1970 Topps Super.

I add to the gallery whenever I have time, so check back occasionally for new cards. Enjoy your visit!