Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

The Fleer Corporation printed football cards each year from 1960 to 1963. In 1960, 1962, and 1963, Fleer had rights to the AFL players, while their competitor, Topps, had rights to the NFL players. In 1961, both companies printed cards of both AFL and NFL players.

The 1960 Fleer set contains players and coaches from the original eight AFL teams. Since 1960 was the first year of the AFL, many of the players were coming to the league from college, and they are shown in their college uniforms. 1959 Heisman winner Billy Cannon is one example, in his LSU uniform. Other players are shown in uniforms of NFL teams they played for in prior years: George Blanda, for instance, is in a Bears uniform. Some of the players in the set were either cut before the season or did not get any playing time, judging by the records at pro-football-reference.com. Jim Woodard and George Blanch, both with the Raiders, are two players who do not appear on that site.

I recently created a page in the Vintage Football Card Gallery that shows a virtual uncut sheet of 1960 Fleer cards. As you can see on that page, an uncut sheet contained all 132 cards in the set, so no cards were short-printed. Because of where they were positioned on the sheet, however, some cards are much more difficult to find in high grade. The scarcest card is Jim Woodard, in the bottom left corner of the sheet. The corners of the uncut sheets evidently got damaged just as the corners of cards do.

The 1960 Fleer set contains the rookie cards of Hall of Famers Ron Mix, Hank Stram, and Sid Gillman, as well as the rookie cards of Jack Kemp and Heisman Trophy winner Billy Cannon. (Sid Gillman also has a pre-rookie card in the 1959 Bell Brand Rams set.)

The 1961 Fleer set contains 220 cards, and it was released in two series: the first with 132 NFL players, the second with 88 AFL players. The cards in each series are sorted by team nickname. In the first series, the Bears cards are first, then the Browns, Cardinals, Colts, Cowboys, and so on to the Vikings. The second series has the Bills, Broncos, Chargers, etc. Interestingly, most of the photos of the NFL players show them standing, hands on hips, but most of the photos of the AFL players are action shots.

The 1961 Fleer virtual uncut sheet page shows what the second series sheets looked like, and it shows how the cards’ placement on the sheet has affected their availability in high grade. Though the price guides assign higher values to the second series cards, in reality they are more common than the first series cards, and they sell for less.

The 1961 Fleer set includes the rookie cards of two Hall of Famers, Jim Otto and Don Maynard, both AFL players. Because Topps also printed cards of AFL players in 1961, Otto and Maynard also have rookie cards in the 1961 Topps set. The 1961 Fleer set also contains two notable errors: the player on Goose Gonsoulin’s card is not Goose Gonsoulin, and the Packers logo is backward on every Green Bay Packers card.

Finally, the set reflects the changes to the leagues in 1961: the Vikings were an NFL expansion team, and the AFL’s Chargers moved from Los Angeles to San Diego.

The 1962 Fleer set contains 88 cards, and it appears to have been printed in smaller numbers than the other Fleer sets. The cards are attractive, but they suffer from poor quality control: many of them were cut off-center, and many have large amounts of wax on the back. The cards are grouped and ordered by city: Boston first, then Buffalo, Dallas, Denver, Houston, New York, Oakland, and San Diego. I have not seen an uncut sheet, but because the first four cards in the set are scarce in high grades, I’ll bet that they were on the left edge, as they are were on sheets of 1963 Fleer cards.

The only Hall-of-Famer rookie card in the 1962 Fleer set is that of Billy Shaw. Shaw is the only player in the Pro Football Hall of Fame who never played in the NFL.

The 1963 Fleer set contains 89 cards: 88 players and an unnumbered checklist. The addition of the checklist caused the Bob Dougherty and Charles Long cards in the set to be short printed, as discussed on my virtual uncut sheet page for the set. The set also has a variation that none of the price guides acknowledges: cards with numbers divisible by 4 come both with and without a bottom stripe on the back. See the 1963 Fleer uncut sheet page for a discussion of that, too.

The 1963 set contains the rookie cards of three Hall of Famers: Len Dawson, Lance Alworth, and Nick Buoniconti. It also reflects the AFL’s two team changes in 1963: the Dallas Texans moved to Kansas City and became the Chiefs, and the New York Titans changed their nickname to the Jets. According to Wikipedia, the Titans were sold in 1963 and moved to Shea Stadium, which is close to LaGuardia Airport, and they hence became the Jets. One of the new owners was Leon Hess, founder of the Hess Corporation. The early Jets colors and logo were made to resemble Hess’s.

1963 marked the end of Fleer’s short run. In 1964, Philadelphia Gum Company obtained the rights to print cards of NFL players, and Topps in turn obtained the rights to the AFL.

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A page at pro-football-reference.com called “Cups of Coffee” lists all of the pro football players who appeared in only one NFL, AFL, or AAFC game. Of course, when I discovered the page, I wondered if any of the players had appeared on football cards. I perused the list and came up with these:

Ronnie Knox

Ronnie Knox played in one game for the Chicago Bears in 1957, but he did not throw a pass. It appears that he was the fourth-string quarterback, a rookie playing behind three veterans. Topps, oddly, printed cards of all four Bears quarterbacks in 1957. Knox also spent a few seasons in the CFL, and he appeared on a few CFL cards. You can usually find them on eBay.

Buddy Allen

Buddy Allen had three carries in one game for the Denver Broncos in 1961. He apparently at least tried out for the Oakland Raiders the year before, because his only card is the 1960 Fleer card shown here. It is possible that he was on the Raiders’ roster in 1960, but the rosters I have found online show only the players who actually played in regular season games.

Jim Yeats

Jim Yeats appeared in one game for the Houston Oilers in 1960, but he did not have any stats. The card pictured here is his 1960 Fleer card. Unfortunately, on his only card, Fleer misspelled his name. I heard from one of Yeats’s relatives a few years ago, and she told me that he was with the Packers in 1958 and 1959, and that he was still with the Oilers in 1961. He evidently did not see playing time those years.

1960 was the first year of the AFL, and the teams’ rosters apparently were not final when Fleer chose the players to include on their cards. Many of the players on 1960 Fleer cards did not see playing time in the AFL.

Don McKissack

Don McKissack played in one game for the NFL’s Dallas Texans in 1952, two years after he was drafted by the Los Angeles Rams. If you count variations, he appeared on two cards in the 1950 Felt Backs set: a brown one and a yellow one. (The price guides assign higher prices to the yellow 1950 Topps Felt Backs, but the brown ones are actually scarcer.)

Mark Burke

Mark Burke saw playing time for the Philadelphia Eagles in the last game of the 1976 season. He returned one punt for fourteen yards, not too shabby. He appeared on the 1974 West Virginia playing card pictured here.

Steve Haggerty

Steve Haggerty played in one game for the Denver Broncos in 1975, but he did not get any stats. Here he is on a 1974 Colorado Playing Card, though he had transferred to UNLV for the 1974 season.

Larry Joe

Larry Joe played one game for the AAFC’s Buffalo Bills in 1949. He had a pretty good game, gaining 82 all-purpose yards. Joe appeared on a 1948 Leaf football card–one of the tough high numbers–with Penn State. I did a quick web search for Joe and found that he still holds the Penn State record for career kickoff return average.

Last month I posted examples of my favorite pose on football cards, the pose in which the player is sitting, holding his helmet. This month I thought I’d post my favorite action shot: the quarterback throwing a jump pass. Shown here are 1960 Fleer Tom O’Connell, 1959 Topps King Hill, 1956 Topps George Shaw, and–complete with blockers!–1958 Topps Lamar McHan. Want more? The 1960 Fleer set uses the shot for at least five quarterbacks.

I couldn’t recall ever seeing a jump pass–or at least an intentional one–in a game, so I did a little YouTube search. I turned up a couple: Ralph Guglielmi of Notre Dame (at about 1:20) and Tim Tebow of Florida.

• Search Nearmint’s Football Cards for: George Shaw, Lamar McHan, King Hill
• Search eBay for: George Shaw, Lamar McHan, King Hill

I’ve never seen a full uncut sheet of 1960 Fleer football cards, so I created a page in the Football Card Gallery that shows what I think an uncut sheet looked like. I’m calling it the Virtual 1960 Fleer Uncut Sheet. To piece it together, I looked at some uncut strips like these and filled in the blanks. The page also shows some wrong-back cards from the set.

I could tell that Jack Kemp had died even before I heard the news. A bunch of his cards suddenly appeared on eBay, and I got a couple of orders for his cards, as well. If I look at the log for my gallery, I’m sure I’ll also see a lot of recent searches there for Jack Kemp cards. I check the logs every week or so, and I can often tell that a player has died by the number of searches for him.

Pictured here is Kemp’s rookie card, the cornerstone of my 1960 Fleer set. I don’t recognize his jersey, though. Many of the players in this set are pictured in their college uniforms, but Kemp doesn’t appear to be in current Occidental colors. Before the Chargers, he also spent time with the Lions, Steelers, Giants, 49ers, and Calgary Stampeders, but I don’t recognize the jersey as being from any of those teams, either. Can anyone help?

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!