March 12th, 2014 |
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CFL Cards, New in the Gallery
Last week I finished adding 1968 O-Pee-Chee CFL football cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. As I have said before, one thing I enjoy about browsing CFL sets is finding players who also played in the NFL or AFL. The 1968 O-Pee-Chee set contains several players who had brief NFL or AFL careers, but who never appeared on an American football card.
The 1968 O-Pee-Chee set also includes one player, Pete Liske, who appeared on AFL, NFL, and CFL cards. He is now the fifth player to appear on my Cards in Three Leagues page. Liske was named the CFL’s Most Outstanding Player in 1967.
A huge thanks to CFL collector Larry Oleskiw, who provided the images for the 1968 O-Pee-Chee set. Larry also sent me images for several other Canadian sets, and I will add those to the Gallery as I have time.
January 8th, 2013 |
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CFL Cards, New in the Gallery
Yesterday I added 1959 Topps CFL cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. As you can see, they look very much like 1959 Topps NFL cards. Fans of the American Football League will find a number of familiar players in the set. Two of them are pictured here: Ernie Warlick, who played from 1962 to 1965 for the Buffalo Bills, and Sam DeLuca, who played from 1960 to 1966 for the Chargers and Jets. I identified several others in the set description.
November 25th, 2012 |
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Player Deaths
Ernie Warlick, a tight end for the CFL’s Calgary Stampeders from 1957 to 1961 and the AFL’s Buffalo Bills from 1962 to 1965, passed away on November 24. Warlick was an AFL All-Star all four of his seasons with the Bills, and he was a member of the Bills’ 1964 and 1965 AFL championship teams. The Buffalo News web site has a story about Warlick, including a recent photo.
Pictured here is Warlick’s 1963 Fleer football card. He appeared on one other AFL card, a 1965 Topps “Tall Boy.” He also appeared on several CFL cards with the Stampeders.
March 30th, 2012 |
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CFL Cards, New in the Gallery
This week I added 1962 Topps CFL cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. There are 169 cards in the set, about 21 per team. Most Topps sets contain about 10-12 cards per team, so many of the players in the 1962 CFL set were making their first appearance on a card.
As usual with non-NFL sets, I enjoyed finding players who had played in the NFL but who had not appeared on cards for their NFL teams. Pictured here are three of the those players: Hal Ledyard played for the 49ers in 1953, Chuck Quilter played for the 49ers in 1949 and 1950, and George Scott played for the Giants in 1959. I identified a few other ex-NFL players, as well; just browse the set to see them.
August 5th, 2010 |
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CFL Cards
I am developing an interest in old CFL cards, but there are a lot of them out there, and it is hard to decide which ones to collect. I thought that I would start by picking up a few CFL cards of players who also played in the NFL or AFL. Some of these players–Sam Etcheverry comes to mind–started in the CFL, did well, and then got opportunity in one of the U.S. leagues. (This happened a lot in the early 1960s, when the AFL was formed and the NFL expanded.) Others started in the NFL, lost their places on the roster, and had more success in the CFL. Still others–Babe Parilli, for example–bounced around between the three leagues.
Pictured here is an example of a player who started in the NFL but had more success in the CFL. Ernie Danjean was drafted in 1957 by the Packers, but he spent only one season with the team. In 1959 he joined the Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the CFL. He played two years for Hamilton, and then three for the Calgary Stampeders. He appeared on at least three CFL cards with Calgary: the 1963 Topps card shown here; a 1962 Post Cereal card, which you can see on his cflapedia page; and a 1964 Topps CFL card, which you can find on eBay.
As you can see, the fronts of 1963 Topps CFL cards are plain compared to their NFL counterparts. The backs of the cards in the two sets are essentially the same, except that the text on the CFL card backs is printed in both English and French. A piece of red cellophane would reveal the answers to the “mystery quiz” questions on cards in either set. I have a bit of that cellophane somewhere–if only I could find it!
