Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

Here are the latest additions to my own collection: two 1958 Puritan Meats BC Lions football cards. According to Beckett, there are 50 cards in the set, and they were distributed with Puritan canned meat products. They are 2 1/4 by 3 3/8″, and they are on thicker-than-normal cardboard. The backs of these two cards are the same, and I presume that the rest of the cards also have the same back. (You can click on the images to see slightly bigger versions.)

Howard Schnellenberger played two years in the CFL, then went on to a long coaching career, including two years as head coach of the Baltimore Colts. Ted Hunt played for BC for two seasons, and he also excelled at lacrosse, skiing, and boxing. Hunt was inducted into the BC Sports Hall of Fame in 1972.

These are the first two cards I have found from the set. If I get a few more, I’ll add the set to the Canadian section of the Vintage Football Card 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.

The backs of some 1964 Topps CFL cards have puzzle pieces printed on them, and I spent the morning putting the puzzle together for you. I can’t say it’s a pretty picture. I believe it was the first puzzle to appear on the backs of football cards, however, so the Canadians do get some innovation points. I also did some consolidation and put the puzzles from the 1968 Topps and 1969 Topps NFL/AFL sets on the same page. Check out the full set of 1960s puzzles.

Over the weekend I added 1972 O-Pee-Chee CFL football cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. The 1972 O-Pee-Chee cards closely resemble 1972 Topps NFL cards, but they’re somehow even plainer. The images on the O-Pee-Chee cards tend to be dark, also, particularly on the fourteen “Pro Action” cards. According to my Beckett catalog, the Pro Action card pictured here shows Joe Theismann in action. Kind of hard to tell, isn’t it?

As you probably guessed, I put the 1972 O-Pee-Chee set in the Canadian football card category.

Coincidentally, there is currently an uncut sheet of 1972 O-Pee-Chee cards on eBay, as well as an empty wrapper.

This week I added 1956 Parkhurst Canadian cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery–or most of them, anyway. There are fifty cards in the set, and they are printed on photo stock. The fronts of the cards originally came undeveloped, and the packs included squares of developing paper for revealing the images. You can see an example of the developing paper on eBay.

I didn’t know much about this set before I bought it, and it was a nice surprise to find that it includes the card shown here. The card pictures Cal Jones, the first African-American to win the Outland Trophy. Jones also placed tenth in Heisman Trophy voting in 1955, and this card filled a hole on my page of cards of Heisman candidates. Jones and four other Canadian football players died in a plane crash after the 1956 season. 1956 was Jones’s first year as a pro, and I didn’t know he had appeared on a card. Two of the other crash victims, Mel Becket and Gordon Sturtridge, appear in the set, as well.

This is the eleventh Canadian set I have added to the Gallery; you can see all of them on the Canadian football card page. I will be adding the 1972 O-Pee-Chee CFL set soon.

Ed McQuarters, who was elected to the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 1988, is celebrating his 70th birthday today. McQuarters played defensive tackle for the CFL’s Saskatchewan Roughriders from 1966 to 1974. He played in four Grey Cups (CFL championship games), of which the Roughriders won one, in 1966. He was named the CFL’s Most Outstanding Lineman in 1967.

McQuarters played college football at the University of Oklahoma, and he was drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1965 NFL draft. He played in one game for the Cardinals before moving to the CFL. (See my Cups of Coffee page for other players who played in exactly one NFL, AFL, or AAFC game.)

McQuarters is pictured here on his 1970 O-Pee-Chee CFL football card.

Happy birthday, Mr. McQuarters!

Here’s a trivia question for you: what legendary NFL running back appeared on the 1964 Topps CFL Saskatchewan Roughriders team card? Here is a picture of the card. The player is in the middle row, fourth from the left, wearing number 32.

Give up? The answer is Jim Brown. What, you say, Jim Brown never played in the CFL? Well, it’s a trick question, because the team pictured on the card is not the 1964 Saskatchewan Roughriders. It is actually the 1959 Cleveland Browns. I learned this bit of trivia earlier this week from a post on a Roughriders forum.

But that’s not the extent of the error. Topps routinely used the same team photos for years at a time, and all of the Roughrider team cards in the 1961-1963 Topps CFL sets have the same mistake. Ironically, though Topps used the 1959 Browns photo on several CFL cards, this photo never appeared on an NFL card. Topps used a picture of the 1958 Browns team on all of its Browns team cards from 1959 to 1963.

For many more football cards that picture the wrong players, see the Mistaken Identities page of the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

Last week, while adding 1970 O-Pee-Chee CFL cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery, I was amused by some of the images. Many of the photos appear to have been taken at night, with a flash. The photos weren’t bad if the player filled the frame, such as on Danny Nykoluk’s card. The effect didn’t work so well with action shots, however. Check out Jerry Campbell, who looks as if he was caught by a nighttime wildlife camera. And Ron Stewart and Wayne Giardino, who appear to have tripped the camera a little early!

(Photo of deer courtesy of Chert Hollow Farm, LLC. Thanks, Eric and Joanna!)

This week I added 1970 O-Pee-Chee CFL cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. There are 115 cards in the set, and they closely resemble second series 1969 Topps NFL/AFL cards.

One of the 1970 O-Pee-Chee cards, Ed McQuarters, is pictured here. McQuarters played in exactly one NFL game before moving to Canada, so I added his card to my Cups of Coffee page. McQuarters starred for the Saskatchewan Roughriders for nine seasons, and he was elected to the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 1988.

You can read more about the 1970 O-Pee-Chee set in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. For more CFL sets, see my page of Canadian football cards.

If you have been following this blog, you know that I recently added several sets of CFL football cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. While adding the CFL cards, I encountered a few players who also appeared on cards for teams in both the NFL and AFL. To spotlight those players, I created a new Gallery page called Cards in Three Leagues.

One of the three-league players, Tobin Rote, is pictured here on his 1961 Topps CFL card. To see the others, check out my new page. And, in case you haven’t seen them, check out the Gallery’s other fun pages, too!