Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

Dom Moselle, who played halfback and defensive back from 1950 to 1954 for the Cleveland Browns, Green Bay Packers, and Philadelphia Eagles, passed away yesterday. He was a rookie on the Browns team that won the NFL Championship in 1950, their first year in the league. Moselle also spent one season, 1955, with the Calgary Stampeders of the CFL.

Moselle is pictured here on his 1952 Bowman Small card. He also appeared on a 1952 Bowman Large card, identical except for its size.

Today I put together another virtual uncut sheet, this time for 1958 Topps football cards. Once again, the cards that are scarcest in high grade are on the edges of the sheet.

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

In an article in April, I wrote that Lee Folkins had told me that the facsimile signature on his 1964 Kellogg’s stamp was not in his handwriting. Today I noticed that some Kahn’s Wieners cards also have faked facsimile signatures on them. Below are the 1962 and 1963 Kahn’s cards of Fran Tarkenton. I don’t know if either card shows a true representation of Tarkenton’s signature, but you can certainly tell that at least one does not.

I looked around on eBay and found other Kahn’s cards of the same player that have obviously different handwriting on them. The facsimile signatures on Ernie Stautner‘s 1961 and 1963 Kahn’s cards are much different from one another (look at the t’s), as are the ones on Lou Michaels‘s 1962 and 1963 cards (look at the leading L). And the signatures on Jim Brown‘s 1961, 1962, and 1963 cards all look different to me. It took me just a few minutes to find these, so I am sure it would be easy to find more examples.

I wonder: did the people who designed these cards intend for people to think that the signatures were copies of the players’ real signatures? If they wanted to fool people, I would think that they would have used the same signatures from year to year. Perhaps they wanted to give the impression that the signatures were copies of the real thing, but it didn’t matter enough to put a real effort into it. After all, the cards came free with wieners.

Since 1976, the last player selected in the NFL draft has been dubbed Mr. Irrelevant and invited to a celebration called Irrelevant Week. The event, which was started by Paul Salata, a former receiver for the San Francisco 49ers and original Baltimore Colts, raises money for Orange County charities. You can read about the this year’s Mr. Irrelevant and the 2010 festivities at IrrelevantWeek.com.

The Vintage Football Card Gallery has pictures of cards only up to 1976, so it includes only one card of an official Mister Irrelevant. It also, however, includes a few cards of players who would have been named Mr. Irrelevant if the title had been awarded earlier. Most of these players turned out to be relevant, after all, or they would not have made it onto football cards. Here are all of players in the Gallery who were chosen last in the NFL draft:

Bill Fischer, 1948

Bill Fischer was the final player chosen in the 1948 draft; the Chicago Cardinals picked him in the 32nd round. Unfortunately, according to an article on buzzle.com, Fischer was ineligible for the NFL in 1948–perhaps because he was only a junior? So the Cardinals drafted him again in 1949, this time in the first round. Fischer played five seasons for the Cardinals and went to three Pro Bowls.

This is his rookie card, a 1950 Bowman. He also appeared on Bowman cards in 1951 and 1952.

John Schweder, 1949

John “Bull” Schweder was the 251st and last player chosen in the 1949 draft. The Philadelphia Eagles picked him, but he apparently did not make their roster in 1949. In 1950 he joined the Baltimore Colts, but the Colts folded after the season, and the team’s players were made available in the 1951 draft. In 1951, Schweder was again drafted, this time at pick number 103, by the Pittsburgh Steelers. He played for the Steelers from 1951 to 1955.

Pictured here is one of Schweder’s rookie cards, a 1952 Bowman Small. He also appeared on several other 1950s Bowman cards.

Sisto Averno, 1951

Sisto Averno was another member of the 1950 Baltimore Colts team who ended up in the draft when the team disbanded. Averno was the last player chosen in 1951, by the Cleveland Browns in the 30th round. He played for the New York Yanks in 1951, and the Yanks folded at the end of that season. The NFL gave the remnants of the Yanks to a new franchise in Dallas in 1952, and–guess what?–that franchise also folded at the end of the season. In 1953, the league awarded the remains of the Dallas team to another Baltimore Colts franchise, and Averno spent two years with the new Baltimore team before calling it a career. (See Bob Carroll’s article at profootballresearchers.com for a detailed description of the churn in the NFL in the early 1950s.)

Averno appeared on one card, this 1953 Bowman.

Jacque MacKinnon, 1961

Jacque MacKinnon was the last player chosen in the 1961 NFL draft. The Philadelphia Eagles chose him with the 280th overall pick. He instead went to the AFL’s San Diego Chargers, and in nine years with the Chargers, he made the Pro Bowl twice.

The card pictured here is MacKinnon’s rookie card, a short print in the 1964 Topps set. He also appeared on several other Topps cards in the late 1960s. (On his 1969 Topps card, he looks like Emilio Estevez!)

Stan Hegener, 1975

Stan Hegener was the last player chosen in the 1975 NFL draft. The Pittsburgh Steelers chose him with the 442nd overall pick, but he apparently did not make the team. The card pictured here is a 1973 Nebraska playing card, from his college days. He also appeared on a 1974 Nebraska playing card.

Jim Kelleher, 1977

Jim Kelleher is the only official Mr. Irrelevant in the Gallery. The Mr. Irrelevant title was first awarded in 1976, and Kelleher was the last player chosen in the 1977 NFL draft. The Minnesota Vikings chose Kelleher with the 335th overall pick, but he did not see playing time in the NFL. The card here pictures Kelleher on his 1974 University of Colorado playing card.

The Mr. Irrelevant page on Wikipedia lists all of the players chosen last in the NFL draft, before and after 1976.

Over the weekend I added most of the 1950 Topps Felt Back cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. As I wrote in T is for Topps, Part 1, these are homely cards, and they are even homelier in lower grades. Because they are colored to the edges, any wear on the edges stands out, and even cards in good shape can have loose threads hanging off the felt.

The cards do have their positive qualities, though: that they actually have felt on the back is kind of cool, and the terms describing the players (e.g., “Brainy Quarterback”) are unique and fun. The set includes the rookie cards of two Pro Football Hall of Famers, Ernie Stautner and Lou Creekmur; and two famous college coaches, Joe Paterno and Darrell Royal.

The cards were printed twenty-five to a sheet, with all red cards on one sheet, all blue cards on another sheet, etc. You can see a complete red sheet and a complete brown sheet, as well as their backs, on the Memory Lane Inc. web site.

• Search Nearmint’s Cards for 1950 Topps Felt Backs.
• Search eBay for 1950 Topps Felt Backs.

Here’s another 1963 Topps CFL card of a player who had a short career in the NFL. Bob Ptacek was drafted by the Cleveland Browns in 1959, spent one season with the team, then went to the CFL’s Saskatchewan Roughriders. According to his Cflapedia page, Ptacek was a jack-of-all-trades for the Roughriders, playing quarterback, linebacker, and defensive back at different times in his six seasons with the team. He made the West All-Star team twice, both times on defense.

The back of Ptacek’s card claims that “Ptacek came to the Roughriders in 1960 in a trade for Jim Marshall,” but I am skeptical about that. Ptacek and Marshall did swap teams in 1960, but I don’t think the CFL and NFL had any trading agreements (someone please correct me if I’m wrong), and Marshall’s Wikipedia page says he was drafted by the Browns in 1960, not obtained in a trade. (Ptacek’s Cflapedia page also mentions this alleged trade, but I suspect that that information came from the card.)

In 1959, before his rookie season with the Browns, Ptacek was named the MVP of the Chicago Charities College All-Star Game. This was an annual preseason game between the top college players and the NFL champions from the previous season. Amusingly, Ptacek isn’t mentioned in the game summary on the College All-Star Game web site. The Baltimore Colts dominated the game, 29-0, but the MVP was always chosen from the college team, and Ptacek apparently had a few bright moments for the All-Stars.

Ptacek appeared on a Topps CFL card each year from 1961 to 1965. So far I have just his 1963 card, but you can see the rest on eBay.

Yesterday a reader sent me this picture of 1972 Sunoco Stamp “Trader Wallets” and asked me if I knew their value. Since I had never seen them before, I had to say no. Sunoco did quite a job of marketing these stamps: in addition to the trader wallets, they also made stamp albums, team sheets, and update stamps available via mail order. I didn’t collect the stamps as a kid–I don’t remember there being any Sunoco or DX stations around my hometown–but if I had, I’m sure I would have wanted all of the accessories.

The two stamps in the photo marked “NEW PLAYER” are from the update set. The NEW PLAYER part detaches from the rest of the stamp along a perforation. You can see this in better detail in an earlier article.

I am still slowly adding pictures of the stamps to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. I am about halfway finished now–Atlanta through Miami!

I am developing an interest in old CFL cards, but there are a lot of them out there, and it is hard to decide which ones to collect. I thought that I would start by picking up a few CFL cards of players who also played in the NFL or AFL. Some of these players–Sam Etcheverry comes to mind–started in the CFL, did well, and then got opportunity in one of the U.S. leagues. (This happened a lot in the early 1960s, when the AFL was formed and the NFL expanded.) Others started in the NFL, lost their places on the roster, and had more success in the CFL. Still others–Babe Parilli, for example–bounced around between the three leagues.

Pictured here is an example of a player who started in the NFL but had more success in the CFL. Ernie Danjean was drafted in 1957 by the Packers, but he spent only one season with the team. In 1959 he joined the Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the CFL. He played two years for Hamilton, and then three for the Calgary Stampeders. He appeared on at least three CFL cards with Calgary: the 1963 Topps card shown here; a 1962 Post Cereal card, which you can see on his cflapedia page; and a 1964 Topps CFL card, which you can find on eBay.

As you can see, the fronts of 1963 Topps CFL cards are plain compared to their NFL counterparts. The backs of the cards in the two sets are essentially the same, except that the text on the CFL card backs is printed in both English and French. A piece of red cellophane would reveal the answers to the “mystery quiz” questions on cards in either set. I have a bit of that cellophane somewhere–if only I could find it!

• See more 1963 Topps CFL football cards on eBay.

Vic Janowicz is another player who played both NFL football and major league baseball. (See last week’s article on Carroll Hardy.) Janowicz won the Heisman Trophy for Ohio State in 1950, then opted for baseball rather than football after graduating in 1951. He made the Pittsburgh Pirates team in 1953, and he played in 83 games over two seasons. In that period he batted just .214, and he returned to football in 1954, joining the Washington Redskins late in the season. He fared much better in the NFL, finishing second in the league in scoring in 1955. In 1956 he was seriously injured in a car accident, and he did not play again.

Despite an unremarkable career in the major leagues, Janowicz appeared on several baseball cards. Both Topps and Bowman were producing baseball cards at the time, and I’m guessing that they printed cards of Janowicz mostly because he was famous for winning the Heisman. I don’t have his baseball cards, but you can see all of them on eBay.

Janowicz’s football rookie card is in the 1951 Topps Magic set, which pictures college players. Rookie cards of Heisman winners are popular with collectors, and the Janowicz card is the key card in the set. He also appeared on 1955 Bowman and 1956 Topps football cards. You can see all of Janowicz’s early football cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

The cards pictured here are Janowicz’s 1955 Bowman baseball card and his 1955 Bowman football card.

Today I added another “interactive” team card to the Vintage Football Card Gallery: a 1959 Topps New York Giants team card. By placing the cursor over a player, you can see who the player is, and by clicking on him, you can see all of his cards. (It doesn’t work on the card pictured here–you have to go to the gallery page.)

Each time I do one of these, I find a surprise or two. This time it was Don Maynard, who was a rookie with the Giants in 1958, when the photo on this card was taken. Maynard caught only five passes in 1958, and in 1959 he did not play. In 1960 he joined the New York Titans (later the Jets) of the AFL, and he gained over 11,000 yards receiving in thirteen years with the team. He is one of six Hall of Famers on this Giants card.