Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

Ever notice that John Unitas’s 1974 Topps card pictures him still in his Colts uniform, but with the jersey numbers colored yellow to look more like a Chargers uniform? Yesterday was the first time I noticed this. Here are his 1973 and 1974 Topps cards, side by side.

Though he appeared on a card in 1974, Unitas did not play that year. He retired on July 23.

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.

This morning, as I scanned some 1968 Topps cards to put up for sale, I amused myself by reading the little cartoons on the backs. Below are a few of them. For each cartoon, see if you can guess the player on the front of each card. Click on the cartoon to see the answer.




I wondered whether “Cornell’s brother, Pumpsie” appeared on any baseball cards, so I did a little search. Sure enough, he has. I learn something every day.

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.

One thing I enjoy about working on the Vintage Football Card Gallery is discovering trivia about the people on the cards. Sometimes the trivia comes in an email. Yesterday, for example, I learned that Lady Gaga’s mother appears on a card in the Gallery. Here is the note that clued me in:

Just an FYI regarding the 1974 pack of playing cards from West Virginia University. Card 12H shows the WVU cheerleaders for 1974. The top cheerleader on the right (Cindy Bissett) is now Cindy Germanti (sp) better known as Lady GaGa’s Mother. I was student manager for the team that year and remember the excitement of having our picture taken and having to sign the release for the University to use our photos, then the complete letdown of getting aced out (pun intended) by the cheerleaders and the AD………..jim wells

I did a quick search, and sure enough, I found Cindy Bissett Germanotta on Rolling Stone’s web site. I had no idea!

Here is the card that Jim was talking about: the cheerleader card in the deck of 1974 West Virginia University playing cards. You can click on the card for a larger image.

Anyone else have surprises to share about the people on the 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!

This week I added 1960 Topps CFL cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. One of them, Tom “Corky” Tharp, is pictured here. Tharp, who skipped to the AFL’s New York Titans in 1960, also appeared on a 1960 Fleer AFL card. He is the only player I can think of who appeared on cards for two different leagues in the same season. (Thanks to Pastor Scott for that bit of trivia.)

This is the fourth CFL set I have added to the gallery in the past month. You can see the other CFL sets, recent and not, on my Canadian football card page.

Did you know that Alex Karras finished second in voting for the Heisman Trophy in 1957? I didn’t, until I saw his name on the Heisman Trophy web site. While browsing the Heisman site, I also found other players whose cards I have, but whom I hadn’t known were Heisman candidates. I thought that a page featuring these candidates and their cards would be interesting, so I assembled one and added it to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. Have a look!

Can you think of cards that look more like bookends than Bobby Bell and Buck Buchanan‘s 1964 Topps cards? Not only did the players’ rookie cards mirror each another, so did their careers:

• Bell played from 1963 to 1974, all with the Chiefs. Buchanan played from 1963 to 1975, also all with the Chiefs.
• Bell played in nine AFL All-Star and NFL Pro Bowl games; Buchanan played in eight.
• Bell was inducted into the Chiefs Hall of Fame in 1980, Buchanan in 1981.
• Bell was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1983; Buchanan was inducted in 1990. Buchanan was also a finalist four times previously, starting in 1984.
• Finally, both are members of the College Football Hall of Fame. Bell was inducted in 1991, Buchanan in 1996.

While putting some 1967 Topps cards up for sale today, I noticed that on George Sauer’s card, the name on the back of his jersey was covered. That’s interesting, I thought, the jersey must have had someone else’s name on it. So I did some digging to figure out whose.

First I looked at Sauer’s other cards, and I found that his 1966 Topps card showed the same covering over the name. Sauer was a rookie in 1965, so I guessed that the pictures on his 1966 and 1967 cards came from a photo session early in 1965, before he had a jersey with his name on it. I then looked at pro-football-reference.com to see who wore number 83 the prior season, 1964. I found that it was Bill Rademacher. Rademacher switched to number 23 in 1965, so I’ll bet the jersey Sauer is wearing says “Rademacher” under the tape.

Sauer did pretty well wearing number 83. He played six seasons for the Jets, and he had over 1000 yards receiving in three of those seasons, 1966 through 1968. He lead the AFL with 75 receptions in 1967, and he had eight catches for 133 yards in Super Bowl III, the Jets’ famous upset of the Baltimore Colts.