New in the Gallery: 1977 Touchdown Club Football Cards
May 11th, 2013 | Published in New in the Gallery
This week I added 1977 Touchdown Club cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. The set contains fifty cards of players who were former NFL stars when the cards were issued. According to Beckett’s description of the set, the addresses of the players were included with the cards, so that collectors who bought the cards could mail them to the players for autographs.
The best thing about this set is that it includes some stars who had not appeared on cards during their playing careers. One of those stars, Bill Willis, is pictured here. Willis played on five AAFC and NFL championship teams with the Cleveland Browns, and he was voted first team All-NFL three times in the early 1950s. Somehow he didn’t appear on a card before this one, though. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1977, the year this card was issued.
I couldn’t decide whether to list the Touchdown Club cards under Regular Issues or Oddball, but for now they are under Regular Issues. Perhaps they belong in a new category, called Tribute Sets, along with sets like 1974 and 1975 Fleer Immortal Roll cards and 1963 Stancraft playing cards. Any opinions?
