Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

I added a new page, called Almost Hall of Famers, to the Vintage Football Card Gallery this week. The page shows all of the players in the Gallery who have been finalists for the Hall of Fame, but who have not yet been elected. One of them, George Young, is pictured here on his 1951 Topps Magic card. Young, who was a general manager for the New York Giants for 19 years, was a finalist as a contributor in 2005.

Check out the new page and the Gallery’s other “Fun Pages“!

Not surprisingly, there has been a lot of interest in Curley Culp’s 1973 Topps rookie card since he was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame a week ago. Less known are Culp’s pre-rookie issues, but there are collectors who find pre-rookies highly desirable, as well. Culp appeared on at least two: the 1971 Kellogg’s card and 1972 Sunoco stamp pictured here. They are the latest additions to the pre-rookie card page of the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

Yesterday I added 1953 University of Oregon cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. I have just eight of the twenty cards in the set, but since I don’t see them for sale very often, I thought I would display the ones I have. The cards are 2.25 by 3.5 inches, and the backs of the cards are all the same.

Four of the players in the 1953 Oregon set went on to play professionally. One of those players is pictured here: Jack Patera played seven years with the NFL’s Baltimore Colts, Chicago Cardinals, and Dallas Cowboys. In 1976, he became the first head coach of the Seattle Seahawks, and he coached the Seahawks for seven seasons. Patera was named the NFL Coach of the Year in 1979.

I filed the 1953 Oregon cards under Food and Regional Issues.

To make them easier to find, I am converting some of my more popular blog articles into proper web pages and moving them to my Gallery site. Today I converted my article about Mr. Irrelevant and added it to Fun Pages section of the Gallery home page. I recently also converted my Cups of Coffee and Olympic Athletes articles. My experience is that the blog works best for newsy items, and static pages work better for information that doesn’t change much. If you are a site owner and happen to have linked to my blog articles, no worries, the links will be forwarded automatically.

Anyway, if you haven’t a clue who Mr. Irrelevant is, avoid embarrassment and check out the new Gallery page. Mr. Irrelevant 1961, Jacque MacKinnon, is pictured here.

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.

This week I picked up two more miscut cards that will help me figure out how 1962 Topps football cards were arranged on the uncut sheets. The Boyd Dowler card shown here has a sliver of Roger LeClerc’s card on the right, and the Steve Myhra card has a bit of Joe Walton’s card on the right. Both of these clues let me add on to pieces of the puzzle I already had. You can see my progress on the 1962 Topps virtual uncut sheet page of the Vintage Football Card Gallery. Scroll toward the bottom to see where the new pieces fit.

Why are uncut sheets interesting? See a previous article, U is for Uncut Sheets.

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!

Yesterday I added 1958 Topps CFL football cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. These were the first CFL football cards that Topps produced, and they look very much like 1958 Topps NFL cards. There are 88 cards in the set. At least 18 players in the set also played in the AAFC, NFL, or AFL.

The set includes the first card of Cookie Gilchrist, pictured here. Gilchrist played six seasons in the CFL, then six more in the AFL. He led the AFL in rushing twice, in 1962 and 1964.

The 1958 set is the sixth CFL set I have added to the Gallery in the past few weeks. You can see the others on the Canadian football card page.

Yesterday I added 1959 Topps CFL cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. As you can see, they look very much like 1959 Topps NFL cards. Fans of the American Football League will find a number of familiar players in the set. Two of them are pictured here: Ernie Warlick, who played from 1962 to 1965 for the Buffalo Bills, and Sam DeLuca, who played from 1960 to 1966 for the Chargers and Jets. I identified several others in the set description.

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.