Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

While surfing the web this week, I found a picture of a partial sheet of 1955 Topps All-American football cards. The partial sheet contains 50 cards, half of the 100 cards in the complete set. Today I created a virtual version of it and added it to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. For now it’s on my “In Progress” page, but I will probably promote it to its own page when I get time.

Today I added a virtual uncut sheet of 1956 Topps cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. I modeled the sheet after a picture of a partial sheet I found on the ‘net. This is the first Topps sheet I have seen with a pattern to the numbering; this allowed me to extend the partial sheet to a half-sheet.

(Click the image to see the whole virtual sheet.)

Yesterday, while searching the internet, I found a tiny picture of a partial uncut sheet of 1957 Topps football cards. Using the picture as a model–and doing a lot of squinting!–I created a virtual partial sheet of 1957 Topps cards and added it to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. Judging by the partial sheet, 1957 Topps football cards were not released in two series, as the price guides say. They were released in just one series, with most of the high-numbered cards being short prints.

(Click on the image to see the rest of the partial sheet.)

Over the weekend I picked up a couple of miscut 1959 Topps first series cards. That allowed me to add a 1959 Topps section to my page of partial virtual uncut sheets. The cards are Bill Barnes, with a sliver of Leo Nomellini’s card showing on the right side, and the Colts pennant, with a sliver of Bob St. Clair’s card on the left side.

A previous blog article, U is for Uncut Sheets, contains a full list of the virtual uncut football card sheets I have completed. As always, if you have miscut cards from sheets I haven’t done yet, I’d love to see them.

Last week I added 1961 Kahn’s Wieners cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. There are 36 cards in this Kahn’s set, with 32 being Browns and Steelers. Kahn’s was (and still is) based in Cincinnati, and Cleveland and Pittsburgh were the closest pro teams at the time.

The other four players in the set–Frank Varrichione, Will Renfro, Jimmy Orr, and Joe Lewis–were with either Cleveland or Pittsburgh the previous season. It appears that Kahn’s intended to make the set all Browns and Steelers, but these players moved, so Kahn’s simply changed the teams on the backs of their cards.

Two of the cards in the set, Tom Tracy and Larry Krutko, have their images swapped. This is especially unfortunate for Krutko, because I believe that this is his only football card. (For more old football cards that picture the wrong player, see my Mistaken Identities page.)

The set includes a pre-rookie card of Gene Hickerson. Hickerson had more pre-rookie cards than any other Hall of Famer I can think of: he appeared in the 1959 through 1962 Kahn’s sets, and on a 1962 Post Cereal card.

Thanks again to Mike Ford, who provided images for several of the Kahn’s sets.

A few weeks ago, in a previous blog article, I asked readers to send me any images they had of miscut vintage football cards. In response, Steve Liskey of TheCowboysGuide.com sent me this image of a 1967 Topps Steve Tensi card. You can see that it has a sliver of a Buffalo Bills card showing; the card happens to be Jack Kemp. Steve’s contribution prompted me to create a page of virtual sheets in progress. It’s short for now, but hopefully you can help me make it grow.

Thanks, Steve!

Last week I added virtual uncut sheets of 1955 Bowman cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. I have not seen an actual sheet of 1955 Bowmans, but I presume they followed the same numbering pattern as sheets of older Bowman cards. I believe that the 160-card set was printed on 5 sheets of 32.

Bowman apparently printed the fifth 1955 sheet in smaller quantities than the other four, because most of the scarce cards in the set are from the fifth sheet.

(Click on the image to see all five sheets.)

Yesterday I added virtual uncut sheets of 1954 Bowman cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. I have not seen an actual sheet of 1954 Bowmans, but I followed the numbering patterns on sheets of older Bowman cards and made an educated guess as to what the 1954 sheets looked like.

Bowman apparently printed the third 1954 sheet in smaller quantities than the others, because most of the scarcer cards are from that sheet.

(Click on the image to see all four sheets.)

Last week I added 1969 Glendale Stamps to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. There are 312 stamps in the set, 12 each for the 26 NFL teams of the time. The stamps are slightly smaller than 2×3 inches.

The stamps were printed on panels of 12, and they were designed to be stuck in a special album. The album contains a page for each NFL team, and each team page contains a bio for each player and a place for his stamp. The full stamp panels were approximately the same height and width as the album, so I assume that the stamps and album came packaged together. The album was published by Glendale Publishers, Inc., of New York City.

Oddly, the title of the stamp album is “Official 1970 Pro Football Stars,” though Glendale apparently published it in 1969. The copyright date inside the album is from 1969, and the players’ bios include their performances in 1968, but not 1969. (Click on the image below to see a larger image.)

There are three Hall of Famers in the 1969 Glendale set whose stamps predate their rookie cards: O.J. Simpson, whose rookie card is a 1970 Topps; Jan Stenerud, whose rookie card is also a 1970 Topps; and Gene Upshaw, whose rookie card is a 1972 Topps. I have added the three stamps to my pre-rookie card page.

• See the full set of 1969 Glendale Stamps in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.
• Find individual Glendale stamps, full panels, and stamp albums on eBay.

Dan Tester (thanks, Dan!) sent me a link yesterday to a picture of a four-card panel of 1953 Bowman football cards. That small panel was enough to show that 1953 Bowmans were printed in numerical order on the uncut sheets, as the earlier Bowman cards were. That bit of knowledge prompted me to go ahead and assemble virtual uncut sheets for the 1953 Bowman set.

One thing I don’t understand is why the price guides show short prints in the 1953 Bowman set. It looks to me as if the 96-card set broke evenly over three sheets of 32. If Bowman had printed fewer copies of one sheet than the others, that would have resulted in short prints, but the price guides’ short prints don’t match up with a single sheet. Maybe some reader can explain it to me.

Anyway, check out the new sheets!