Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

I have been busy scanning 1978 Topps cards for the Vintage Football Card Gallery, and I have been amused by some of the images on the cards. The set contains a lot of sideline shots, so it’s no surprise that the players aren’t looking their best. Here are just a couple of beauties: Tom Banks going for the oxygen mask, and Bill Lenkaitis sporting an Ed Grimley ‘do.

Both players cleaned up well. Here are Banks and Lenkaitis on their 1976 Topps cards.

I am only about half done with the images, but you can scroll through the rest of the 1978 Topps cards here.

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!)

I was scanning 1976 Topps football cards for the Gallery yesterday, and I came across this Dan Ryczek rookie card. What do you suppose he’s looking at? The scoreboard? The Blue Angels? A Ray Guy punt? Ryczek was a center, so I wondered if Topps mistakenly turned the image 90 degrees. But no, the players behind him are right side up. It’s just a bad photo, not the first one Topps put on a card.

1976 was Tampa Bay’s first season in the NFL, and Ryczek’s card got me looking at the rest of the 1976 Topps Buccaneers cards. I noticed a few interesting things:

• Eight of the ten Buccaneer player cards are rookie cards, though all of the players had been with other teams in years prior. The players all appear in their old teams’ jerseys, so I presume Topps had the photos on file.
• Four players–Ira Gordon, Harold Hart, Durwood Keeton, and Larry Ely–never played in a regular season game for Tampa Bay. John Ward played in just four games before going to the Bears. (See the career stats for Gordon, Hart, Keeton, Ely, and Ward at pro-football-reference.com.)
• The back of the Buccaneers team checklist has a list of the players they chose in the expansion draft, a nice feature.

For an entertaining read, check out the Wikipedia article on the 1976 Buccaneers–especially coach John McKay’s quotes.

Did you know that the card companies sometimes hired photographers from the DMV to take pictures for sports cards? As you can see from these examples, it’s true. Those DMV folks are experts at catching people with their eyes closed. At least driver’s licenses expire after a few years. People keep sports cards forever!

So, who are our sleepy players, and what cards do they appear on? From the top, we have:

• 1950 Bowman Bob Kelly, of the original Baltimore Colts (also see Baltimore Colts in Green?)
• 1951 Bowman Al Derogatis
• 1967 Topps Babe Parilli
• 1969 Topps Don Maynard (Maynard is also sleepy on his 1967 Topps and 1968 Topps cards)
• 1970 Topps Mike Tilleman
• 1971 Topps Gerry Philbin

I am undoubtedly missing some. If you know ’em, post ’em!

Happy Halloween! This is the scariest vintage football card I can think of, easily topping last year’s Don Hutson card. It’s a 1967 Royal Castle Dolphins card of Ed Cooke, which I recently added to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. (See my earlier article about the Royal Castle Dolphins cards.) The image appears to have been cropped from a 1966 Dolphins press photo, an example of which I found on eBay. The seller of the press photo, historicimages01, has other sports photos on eBay, as well.

I believe that this is Cooke’s only card, though he played in the NFL and AFL for ten seasons. He got around, spending time on six different teams. His longest stint was with the New York Titans/Jets, where he spent four seasons. There is a slightly less scary photo of Cooke at fanbase.com.

So, what’s your favorite scary football card?

Yesterday I added 1955 Rams Team Issue photos to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. The photos are about 4 inches by 6, and they are printed on cardboard. This is unlike the team issue photos I added earlier to the gallery–1955 49ers, 1958 49ers, and 1960 Eagles–which are on paper the thickness of catalog covers.

Beckett says there are 37 photos in the 1955 Rams set, but there are actually 38. The 38th is Bob Kelley, a sports announcer at the time for the Rams and baseball’s Los Angeles Angels. The back of his photo says he moved with the Rams from Cleveland to Los Angeles in 1946.

Besides the Kelley photo, there are 36 player photos and one photo of the coaching staff. The only players on the 1955 Rams roster who are not included in the set are Jack Dwyer and Bob Long. I am nearly sure that this is because the photos were produced during the season, and Dwyer and Long had already left the team by the third game.

Since the whole team is included in the set, many of the photos–eleven, if I counted correctly–picture players who never appeared on cards of their own. I think these guys were excited to get their chance, because they gave us the best action poses in the set. Pictured here are my two favorites, Art Hauser and Ed Hughes.

I realize now that when I picked up my first sets of team issue photos, I bit off more than I expected. I definitely like them, but there are a lot of them! To make room for more, I created a separate team issue photo page in the Gallery.

I ran across this card the other day, a 1969 Topps Ben Davidson, and I thought it was funny that he posed carrying the ball. As far as I knew, he had played only defense. So I looked up his entry at pro-football-reference.com, thinking that maybe he played tight end on occasion. But no, the only positions he ever played were defensive end and defensive tackle.

Maybe he was pretending to run back an interception or a fumble? Unfortunately, he never got a chance in a game: surprisingly, he had no interceptions in his 11-year career, and just two fumble recoveries, neither of which he returned.

Davidson did a lot of acting after his football career, too, appearing in Conan the Barbarian, Necessary Roughness, and a host of primetime TV shows. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a film clip, just a photo of Ben playing Rexor in Conan.

Yesterday I added 1955 49ers Team Issue photos to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. The photos are bigger than cards, at just under 5×7, and I had to order extra-large toploaders for storing them. They came in the original envelope, pictured below. The photos, amazingly, are in much better condition than the envelope.

The photos are sharp black-and-whites, and each includes a facsimile of the player’s signature. On the back of each photo is a glowing biography of the player on the front. (Hardy Brown‘s bio calls him “the most feared linebacker in the game because of his fantastic ‘shoulder tackle’ which uncoils like a pile driver and causes many fumbles”!) Most of the images of the well-known players are familiar, since they also appear in color on 1950s Bowman and Topps cards. Being a team issue, though, the set also includes numerous players who never appeared on cards. In the 50s and 60s, the major card companies printed cards of only 10-12 players from each team, and most linemen and defensive players were left out. I love team sets for this reason: I get to see players I’ve never seen before.

There are 38 photos in the set, and it includes photos of the 49ers’ coaches and their TV and radio announcers. I imagine that in the 50’s, the announcers for each team were as familiar to fans as the players, so it was natural to include them in a team set.

The set includes six Pro Football Hall of Fame players, including the four members of the 49ers’ “Million Dollar Backfield”: Y.A. Tittle, Hugh McElhenny, Joe Perry, and John Henry Johnson.

In 1956, Topps held a logo lookalike contest, and Norm Willey won it with this pose. No, not really, but he does look like he’s doing an eagle imitation, doesn’t he? I have always loved this card for the pose.

I tried to think of other players who resemble the logos on their cards, but I didn’t come up with any. There must be players who look like mean bears or lions. Can anyone think of more?

• Search for Norm Willey cards on: Nearmint’s Cards, eBay

I love some of the poses on vintage football cards. Here is a 1953 Bowman card of Lou Groza, the Browns’ Hall of Fame tackle and kicker, blocking and kicking at the same time. Because of his multiple skills, Groza was chosen by the Cold, Hard Football Facts staff as one of their All-Time 11. Groza was an iron man: after playing 14 years and on 7 AAFC and NFL championship teams, Groza retired in 1959–but in 1961 he un-retired and played 7 more years!

• Search Nearmint’s Football Cards for: Lou Groza, 1953 Bowman
• Search eBay for: Lou Groza, 1953 Bowman