June 4th, 2011 |
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Player Deaths
John Henry Johnson, who played fullback from 1954 to 1966 for the San Francisco 49ers, Detroit Lions, Pittsburgh Steelers, and Houston Oilers, passed away on June 3. Johnson also played one season, 1953, with the CFL’s Calgary Stampeders.
Johnson was a four-time Pro Bowler, once with the 49ers and three times with the Steelers. He was also a member of the Lions NFL Championship team in 1957. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1987.
The card pictured here is Johnson’s rookie card, a 1955 Bowman. Topps used the same image, recolored, on his 1957 Topps card. (See them side-by-side in an earlier blog article.) Johnson appeared on many other cards during his long career, as well.
Also see:
June 3rd, 2011 |
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Football Card Trivia, Interesting eBay Auctions
I noticed this week that eBay seller bmw_cards2 has a bunch of 1948 Bowman wrong-back cards for sale. Pictured here is one of them, a Joe Muha card with a Harry Gilmer back.
I was curious about how the cards got the wrong backs, so I looked at where they were positioned on the uncut sheets. (See my 1948 Bowman virtual uncut sheet page.) It turns out that the fronts of all of BMW’s cards are from the first sheet, and the backs are all from the corresponding positions on the third sheet. (The Muha card is fourth from the right in the bottom row.) I don’t know much about printing, but it looks to me like the printer printed the front of the sheet, then used the wrong plate when printing the back.
Searching eBay further, I found a 1948 Bowman Art Faircloth card with a similar problem, only the Faircloth card has both the correct back and an incorrect back printed on it. Again, the front of the card is from the first sheet, and the incorrect back is from the corresponding position on the third sheet.
June 1st, 2011 |
Published in
Player Deaths
Johnny Brewer, who played tight end and linebacker from 1961 to 1970 for the Cleveland Browns and New Orleans Saints, passed away on May 27. Brewer was a member of the 1964 Browns NFL Championship team, and he made the Pro Bowl with the Browns in 1966. His obituary at legacy.com includes a short summary of his football career.
Pictured here is Brewer’s 1961 National City Bank Browns card, a pre-rookie card. Brewer’s rookie card is in the 1964 Philadelphia set, and he also appeared on a 1967 Philadelphia card. To my knowledge, he did not appear on any cards with the Saints.
June 1st, 2011 |
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New in the Gallery
I have never seen uncut sheets of 1951 Bowman football cards, but I am guessing that they were configured like 1950 and 1952 Bowman sheets. Yesterday I put together 1951 Bowman virtual uncut sheets and added them to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. Click on the image to have a look!
May 31st, 2011 |
Published in
Player Deaths
Andy Robustelli, a defensive end from 1951 to 1964 for the Los Angeles Rams and New York Giants, passed away this morning. The Connecticut Post’s web site has a report of his death, including numerous photos. Robustelli was a seven-time Pro Bowler, and he played on NFL Championship teams with the Rams in 1951 and the Giants in 1956. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1971.
The card shown here is one of Robustelli’s rookie cards, a 1952 Bowman Small. His other rookie card is a 1952 Bowman Large, which is identical except for its size.
May 26th, 2011 |
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Player Deaths
Duke Iversen, a back and linebacker from 1947 to 1951 for the New York Giants and New York Yanks, has passed away. He was 91. There is a recent article about Iversen’s career at petaluma360.com.
Iversen appeared on one football card, the 1948 Bowman card pictured here.
You can see Duke Iversen’s NFL career statistics at pro-football-reference.com.
May 23rd, 2011 |
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error cards | 1 Comment
I was looking at some 1969 Topps cards today, and I ran across this Marv Woodson card. When I read the cartoon on the back, I thought, wow, now that has to be a record! So I did a search for the 1967 Pro Bowl, and I found a nice article about it. The article, it turned out, didn’t support the cartoon; it said Woodson’s team, the NFL East, had a total of four interceptions in the game. I then checked Woodson’s page at pro-football-reference.com and got the real story: Woodson had seven interceptions during the 1967 season, and he also made the Pro Bowl that year. The cartoonist sort of contracted those two accomplishments.
Though I don’t often look at the cartoons, this is the second big error I have found in a cartoon on a Topps card. The other was on Homer Jones’s 1968 Topps card, which said that “Homer Defeated the Russians in the 1960 Olympics.” As I wrote in an earlier blog post, Jones never competed in the Olympics.
So now I’m skeptical: Did Butch Byrd really love to read detective stories in his spare time? Did Roy Jefferson really dabble in investments after football season? Did Ron McDole really play paddle-racquets to stay in condition? I’ll check my facts before quoting the cartoonist!
May 17th, 2011 |
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Football Card Trivia, Uniforms | 3 Comments
I recently put some 1969 Topps football cards up for sale, including this one, Tom Vaughn of the Lions. The Lions logo that Topps used in this set has always looked familiar to me, so yesterday I did some searching. I believe I found what I was thinking of: a Ford Mustang logo from around that time. This might be obvious to Detroit fans, but it appears to me that the designer of the Lions logo gave a nod to the city’s main industry. (The image of the Mustang logo is from motortopia.com.)
This card happens to show Vaughn in my favorite football card pose, where the player is about to put on his helmet. For more examples, see My Favorite Pose, More of My Favorite Pose, and Still More of My Favorite Post.
May 6th, 2011 |
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New in the Gallery
Today I added 1964 Kahn’s Wieners cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. Kahn’s, which is still in business, included football cards in packages of wieners each fall from 1959 to 1964. Only the 1964 set is in color, and they are great looking cards.
There are 53 cards in the 1964 Kahn’s set, with all 14 NFL teams of the time represented. Because Kahn’s distributed their products in the Cincinnati region (and since the Bengals had not yet arrived), the company put a disproportionate number of Cleveland Browns in the set: 9 of the 53 cards. One of the Browns cards, Paul Warfield, is a pre-rookie card, so I will be adding it to my pre-rookie card page. Warfield’s rookie card is in the 1965 Philadelphia set.
A big thanks to Mike Ford for providing images for this set.
April 30th, 2011 |
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New in the Gallery
This week I added virtual uncut sheets of 1948 Leaf and 1949 Leaf football cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. From a picture of a 1949 sheet, I think I have also figured out what the 1948 sheets looked like. The 1949 Leaf set is basically a subset of the 1948 Leaf set with the card backs and card numbers changed, and it appears to me that the sheets would have been similar. Take a peek, and let me know what you think.
