Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

I had always thought that the image on Steve DeLong’s 1966 Topps football card looked odd, but I didn’t know why until I saw it alongside his 1965 Topps card. For some reason, on his 1966 card, the folks at Topps chopped off DeLong’s left shoulder. My only guess is that they wanted the 1966 card to look like it had a different image, but Topps reused images all the time, so that’s not a very good guess. In fact, DeLong’s 1967 Topps and 1969 Topps cards also have the same image, but with DeLong’s shoulder restored.

DeLong is pictured here on his 1965 and 1966 cards, with and without his left shoulder.

John Ward passed away on December 4; he was a lineman from 1970 to 1976 for the Minnesota Vikings, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Chicago Bears. Ward was a member of the Vikings teams who represented the NFC in Super Bowls VIII and IX. There is a story about Ward and a recent picture at newsok.com.

Ward appeared on one football card, the 1976 Topps card pictured here. The card pictures Ward with Tampa Bay, who obtained him from Minnesota in the 1976 NFL Expansion Draft. He played just four games with Tampa Bay, then finished the 1976 season with Chicago.

Yesterday I added 1976 Coke Bears Discs to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. There are 22 players in the set; I believe they were intended to represent the Bears’ 1976 starting lineup. Like most regional sets, the set contains a few players who never appeared on a regular issue football card. See my description of the set for more details. I filed the discs under Oddball.

Merv Pregulman, who played from 1946 to 1949 for the Green Bay Packers, Detroit Lions, and New York Bulldogs, passed away on November 29. There is a story about Pregulman, along with a few photos, on Chattanooga’s WRCBtv.com web site. Pregulman received All-America honors at the University of Michigan, and he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1982. Between college and the NFL, he served in World War II.

Pregulman appeared on one football card, the 1948 Bowman card pictured here.

I have seen one half of a sheet of 1962 Topps football cards, but not the second half. By looking at badly miscut cards, however, I have been able to start piecing the second half-sheet together. You can tell from this Bill George card, for instance, that Dave Baker’s card was next to it on the uncut sheet. Neither of the cards appear on the one half-sheet I have seen, so they must have been on the second half-sheet.

To see the layout of the first half-sheet and my progress on the second half-sheet, see my 1962 Topps virtual uncut sheet page. For a full list of the virtual uncut sheets I have assembled, see a previous blog article, U is for Uncut Sheets.

Jim Temp, a defensive end for the Green Bay Packers from 1957 to 1960, passed away on November 25. The Green Bay Press Gazette web site has a story about Temp, along with several photos. Temp was a member of the 1960 Packers team that lost to the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFL championship game. At the University of Wisconsin, Temp starred in both football and baseball. He was inducted into the University of Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame in 2007.

Temp did not appear on a regular issue football card, but he did appear on the 1961 Lake to Lake Packers card shown here. His Lake to Lake card is one of the short prints in the set. The short prints are much scarcer–and thus much more valuable–than the other cards in the set.

Ernie Warlick, a tight end for the CFL’s Calgary Stampeders from 1957 to 1961 and the AFL’s Buffalo Bills from 1962 to 1965, passed away on November 24. Warlick was an AFL All-Star all four of his seasons with the Bills, and he was a member of the Bills’ 1964 and 1965 AFL championship teams. The Buffalo News web site has a story about Warlick, including a recent photo.

Pictured here is Warlick’s 1963 Fleer football card. He appeared on one other AFL card, a 1965 Topps “Tall Boy.” He also appeared on several CFL cards with the Stampeders.

Those of you who visited my home page last week saw that I had gone on vacation. Well, here’s where I was: on a Habitat for Humanity trip to Cochabamba, Bolivia. On Monday I still looked pretty fresh.

There were 18 of us on the trip, ranging in age from 23 to 79. We worked on the foundations of two homes. Our main job for the week was to dig trenches for the foundations, including 2-foot deep holes for the columns. The ground was hard clay, and we needed pickaxes to loosen it a bit at a time. The holes for the columns were challenging because they had to be square all the way down, and it was hard to get good swings at the corners–at least for novice diggers like us.

We started on Monday with chalk lines on the ground. By Thursday we were filling the trenches and holes with rocks, and the local masons were pouring concrete over them. Here is what the build site looked like toward the end of the week. (You can click on the photo to enlarge it.) The wooden structures were concrete forms with built-in ladders that the masons would climb to fill. That’s me in the bottom right corner, putting rocks in a trench. After 3 1/2 days of digging, carrying rocks was downright fun!

After work we stayed in an exceptionally nice hotel. We also ate very well: our lunches were catered, and our local Habitat hosts took us to some nice restaurants in the area. On Saturday we stayed in Cochabamba to tour the palace of Simon “The Tin Baron” Patiño, watch some colorful local dancers, and visit Cristo de la Concordia.

This was my third trip with Habitat; I have been to Paraguay and Ethiopia, as well. You can read about my earlier trips here. If you like to travel, enjoy meeting cool people, and don’t mind roughing it a bit, I highly recommend taking a Habitat Global Village trip. There is a long list of upcoming trips on the Habitat web site.

Dick Felt, a defensive back from 1960 to 1966 for the AFL’s New York Titans and Boston Patriots, passed away on November 17. The Salt Lake City Tribune has a story about him, along with a few photos. Felt played in the 1963 AFL Championship game, which the Patriots lost to the Chargers. After his playing career, he was an assistant coach at BYU for 26 seasons. He was inducted into the BYU Athletic Hall of Fame in 1977.

Felt appeared on two AFL football cards, the 1963 Fleer and 1964 Topps cards pictured here. There are two variations of the 1963 Fleer card, one with a red stripe on the bottom of the back, and one without the stripe. (See the bottom of my 1963 Fleer uncut sheet page for details.) Felt’s 1964 Topps card is one of the short prints in the set.

Before he became a famous coach, Darrell Royal was an All-American football player at the University of Oklahoma. An article at soonersports.com describes his college playing career. According to the article, Royal is still the record holder for career interceptions at Oklahoma.

Topps honored Royal in 1950 by putting him on a football card–or two, if you count variations. As I wrote in an earlier article, 1950 Topps Felt Back cards are tiny and homely, but the set contains the rookie cards of Royal, Joe Paterno, and two Pro Football Hall of Famers, Ernie Stautner and Lou Creekmur. The Topps Archives blog has a nice description of the set, also.

Royal’s card, like 24 others in the set, was issued in both yellow and brown. The price guides list the yellow variations at higher prices, but in reality it appears that the brown variations are scarcer. Both variations of Royal’s card–which describes him as a “Rapid Quarterback”–are shown here.