Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

Today I added 1961 Fleer Wallet Pictures (also known as Wallet Photos) to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. When I received them, I was surprised–and disappointed–to see that they aren’t cards, they’re images on thin paper. It turns out that the pictures were hand-cut from a magazine (the 1961-62 issue of Complete Sports Pro-Football Illustrated, to be precise), and they’re on newspaper stock. I should have done my homework.

There are 145 pictures in the set: 133 from the interior pages of the magazine, and 12 smaller pictures that were on the back cover. Most of the players also appear in the regular 1961 Fleer set; one example, Lionel Taylor, is shown here. Fortunately–or I’d be really disappointed–a few of the players on the Wallet Pictures don’t appear in the 1961 Fleer set or any other set I’ve seen. At least I got to see some new faces.

(Why are they called Wallet Pictures? I’m guessing the most obvious answer: that kids could cut them out and put them in their wallets.)

The composition of the set is heavily weighted toward AFL players, though the 12 pictures from the back cover are all NFL players. The backs are as plain as plain can be, showing just the player’s name and team. Many of the backs have typos: Don Manoukian’s picture says he’s Dan Manoukin, for example, and Alan Miller is Alan Millis. I suspect that whoever worked on the backs of the pictures was also in charge of the Packers logos on the regular 1961 Fleer cards.

Pictured here are the four players in the set who, as far as I know, don’t appear in other sets: Monte Crockett and Willmer Fowler of the Bills, Bobby Gordon of the Oilers, and Don Deskins of the Raiders. Check out the huge numerals on Deskins’s jersey–and see the other Raiders, also. I believe that the extra-extra-large numerals were for fans watching grainy images on little black-and-white TV screens, but I can’t find a reference that says so. Anyone have one I can point to?

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Last fall, when I wrote in the Collectors Universe forums that I was starting the ABCs, I said that I hadn’t yet thought of a topic for Z. One of the participants there (thanks, nam812!) suggested “Z is for Zebras.” Great idea, I thought, but only a few vintage cards of officials came to mind, and all of them were in the 1966 and 1967 Philadelphia sets. If I had only those to write about, “Z is for Zebras” would be a short article.

I learned last week, though, that Bruce Alford was a longtime NFL official who had appeared on a card as a player. I wondered if other officials had appeared on cards as players, too. Wikipedia happens to have an all-time list of NFL officials, so I perused the list, looking for names I recognized from cards. Including Alford, I found four. That was better, now I could include them in this article, as well.

First, the Philadelphia cards. The 1966 and 1967 Philadelphia sets each include a Referee Signals card and a few cards that have referee signals on the back. In the 1966 set, the referee signals appear on the backs of the “play” cards; in the 1967 set, they appear on the backs of the team cards. The Referee Signals cards and the back of the 1966 Philadelphia Vikings Play card are shown here.

Except for an occasional official in the background (thanks, revmoran!) or random striped shirt in an action photo, that’s really about it for officials on vintage cards. But then we have the zebras who appeared on cards in their pre-zebra days:

Bruce Alford, who recently passed away, spent six years as a player in the AAFC and NFL, then officiated in the NFL for twenty years. He officiated Super Bowls II, VII, and IX. Alford appeared as a player on a 1951 Bowman card.

Al Conway was the Eagles’ first-round draft pick in 1953, and he appeared on a 1953 Bowman card. According to pro-football-reference.com, he never played a league game, but he went on to officiate for 28 years in the AFL and NFL.

Pat Harder played eight years for the Cardinals and Lions, and he appeared on four cards in that span: 1948 Bowman, 1948 Leaf, 1950 Bowman, and 1953 Bowman. His 1948 Bowman card is pictured here. After retiring as a player, Harder was an official for seventeen years. One game he officiated was the Raiders-Steelers playoff game in which Franco Harris made his Immaculate Reception.

Finally, Frank Sinkovitz was a center and linebacker for the Steelers for six years. He appeared on the 1950 Bowman card pictured here, and a 1951 Bowman card. After his playing days, he officiated for 26 years. One game he officiated was Super Bowl XV.

So there you have it, the NFL officials rookie card collection. If you can think of additions, let me know.

Now I know my ABCs…

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• Search eBay for: Bruce Alford, Al Conway, Pat Harder, Frank Sinkovitz
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American football began in the colleges, and the first football cards were of college players. The very first football card, the 1888 Goodwin Champions tobacco card shown here, pictures Henry Beecher, captain of the Yale football team. The scan of the Beecher card is from a recent Huggins & Scott auction; a big thanks to them for letting me use it.

There are fifty cards in the 1888 Goodwin Champions set, ranging from jockeys to oarsmen to chess players, and Beecher is the only football player. The 1888 N162 Goodwin Champions page on obaks.com shows the composition of the full set. According to Wikipedia, the 1888 Champions set was “the first Goodwin set to use colored chromolithography.” As I understand it, this allowed mass production of the colored cards. It also made Henry Beecher appear to be wearing lipstick.

Six years after Beecher’s card, the first football-only set of trading cards was introduced, and it also featured Yale players. The 35-card 1894 Mayo Cut Plugs set contains players from the Big Three football schools of the time: Yale, Princeton, and Harvard. One of the cards, Brinck Thorne, is pictured here. See M is for Mayo Cut Plug for details on the Mayos.

Yale also produced the first professional football player, Pudge Heffelfinger, who was paid $500 for playing a game in 1892. (According to the Inflation Calculator, that’s $11787 in 2009 dollars.) And Yale produced two of the first three Heisman trophy winners, Larry Kelley in 1936 and Clint Frank in 1937. Heffelfinger and Kelley both appear on 1955 Topps All-American cards, pictured here.

After 1937, Yale began losing more games than it won, and only a handful of Yale alumni from after that season have appeared on football cards. There are (five Yale alumni in the 1955 Topps All-American set, but none of them played there after 1937.) One notable alumnus was Brian Dowling, who was the inspiration for B.D. in Doonesbury. You can read about Dowling in an earlier blog article.

For much more on Yale football, see the Harvard-Yale Football Gallery.

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George Gross, defensive tackle for the San Diego Chargers from 1963 to 1967, passed away on April 27. Gross was known for his strength, and was nicknamed “Mr. Muscles.” There is a nice tribute to him on the San Diego Union-Tribune web site.

Pictured here is Gross’s 1965 Topps card, which I believe is his only card. In 1964 and 1965, Topps printed large sets of football cards for the eight AFL teams. Whereas most football card sets at that time contained about ten cards per team, the 1964 Topps and 1965 Topps sets each contained about twenty. Hence Topps was able to include a lot of players who had not previously appeared on cards.

Bruce Alford Sr. passed away on May 8. He was a receiver for the New York Yankees of the All-American Conference and New York Yanks of the NFL from 1946 to 1951. He was voted 1st Team All-AAFC by the Associated Press in 1947.

(The Yankees and Yanks were actually two different teams. When the AAFC merged with the NFL in 1950, the players from the AAFC’s New York Yankees were divided between the NFL’s New York Bulldogs and New York Giants. The Bulldogs then changed their name to the Yanks.)

After his playing days, Alford officiated in the NFL for twenty years, from 1960 to 1979. His son, Bruce Alford Jr., also played in the NFL, kicking for the Redskins and Bills from 1967 to 1969.

To my knowledge, Alford appeared on just one card, the 1951 Bowman card pictured here. I am not aware of any cards of the AAFC’s New York Yankees.

Yesterday I added 1894 Mayo Cut Plug cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. Goodwin and Co. Auctions recently auctioned off the “Anonymous” card and the rest of the set, and they kindly allowed me to use their scans. Thanks, Bill!

Pictured here is the card of Princeton’s Neilson Poe, a relative of Edgar Allan Poe. See M is for Mayo Cut Plug for a short description of the set and links to other sites.

• Search eBay for: 1894 Mayo Cut Plug cards

Yesterday I added 1948 Kellogg’s Pep football cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. The five cards are part of a 42-card sport and entertainment set that was distributed in boxes of Kellogg’s Pep cereal. You can see the composition of the set on PSA’s web site, but you have to look in two places, since PSA split the set into athletes and celebrities. Apparently not many trading card sets contain both.

The cards are small, about half the height of a standard trading card. There is one variation among the football cards: some instances of Charley Trippi’s card have the image reversed, and some have it corrected. The Trippi card shown here has the reversed image, though I’m not sure how to tell. Perhaps by how his chinstrap is fastened?

Trippi’s card shows him in his College All-Star uniform–note the stars on the shoulders. He played in the game five times: four as a college all-star, and one as a Chicago Cardinal, after the Cardinals won the 1947 NFL championship. The College All-Star Game site has a photo of Trippi in action in 1945, the year he was the All-Stars’ MVP.

Another notable card in the 1948 Pep set is a Lou Groza pre-rookie card, pictured here. Groza’s rookie card is a 1950 Bowman. Check out my pre-rookie card page for more pre-rookies.

• Search eBay for: 1948 Kellogg’s Pep cards
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I was looking through some 1968 and 1969 Topps football cards yesterday, and the Steelers’ “Batman” jerseys caught my eye. Looking at the Steelers cards together, I wondered if the Batman jersey photos had all been taken in the same session. It’s possible: I did some Googling and found that the Steelers wore the jerseys for only a season and a half, from the middle of the 1966 season to the end of 1967. My guess is that the photos were all taken before the 1967 season.

An article on team’s web site recounts the full story, but the gist is that, in the midst of the 1966 season, the Steelers decided they wanted their uniforms to be more distinctive. To achieve this, they incorporated a “golden triangle” into their jerseys. This was meant to represent Pittsburgh’s downtown, called the Golden Triangle because it sits between two rivers that give it a triangular shape. (A nice photo I found on Wikipedia shows the triangle.) According to Wikipedia, the players didn’t like the uniforms, because they thought the jerseys looked like Batman’s bat-suit. In 1968, the team reverted to a more standard uniform design, which you can see on 1968 KDKA Steelers cards. Too bad, I think. I kind of like the caped look.

Oddly, though the Steelers were wearing the Batman uniforms going into the 1967 season, the uniforms appear on only one 1967 Philadelphia football card, the Giants Play card shown here. This card shows the Giants and Steelers in their December, 1966, game in New York. All of the 1967 Philadelphia cards of individual Steelers, however, show them in older uniforms. The Batman jerseys didn’t appear on cards of individual Steelers until the 1968 Topps set, after the team had stopped wearing them. The jerseys also appeared on several 1969 Topps cards, and on one 1970 Topps card, Chuck Hinton.

Along with the 1969 Topps Andy Russell card above, here are all of the cards I found that picture players wearing Batman jerseys. Click on any card to get the details about it. There are also a few photos of the Batman uniforms–including a great team shot–on UniWatch’s 1966-67 Steelers flickr page.

As I’ve written before, my favorite pose on a football card pictures the player about to put on his helmet. It’s fun seeing old helmets on cards, but if the players are wearing them, you can’t see their faces. Here are a few examples; for more, see an old post, My Favorite Pose.

1963 Topps Ernie McMillan and 1966 Philadelphia Don Chandler:

1967 Philadelphia Gail Cogdill and 1968 Topps Junior Coffey:

1968 Topps Dan Reeves and 1969 Topps J.R. Wilburn:

A few vintage football cards show diagrams of plays. To me the diagrams seem like filler, and I am not fond of them. I can’t think of a better subject that starts with “X,” though, so here’s a quick rundown. (Hmm, does that mean I’m using them for filler, too?)

The 1964 and 1965 Philadelphia sets include a “Play of the Year” card for each team. On the front of each card is a diagram of the play and a small image of the team’s head coach. The small images are a nice touch, I suppose, but I would have preferred dedicated cards with full-size images for the coaches.

Among the coaches on the Play of the Year cards are Don Shula and Vince Lombardi. Neither coach, to my knowledge, was pictured on card of his own during his career. The 1964 Play of the Year cards could be considered Shula and Lombardi’s rookie cards, but I haven’t seen them designated as such. Pictured here are the 1964 Packers Play of the Year card and the 1965 Philadelphia Colts Play of the Year card.

The back of each team’s Play of the Year card includes a list of the offensive players, which I like. Occasionally a player’s friend or relative will ask me if I have a card of the player, but I have to tell him that the player never appeared on a card. Since some cardless players’ names appear on the Play of the Year cards, I can at least offer one of those cards to the friend or relative.

As I wrote last year, the Play of the Year cards actually feature some pretty ordinary plays. I theorized then that Philadelphia chose short plays so the diagrams would fit on the cards. Could the Lions’ play of the year really have been just a ten-yard completion? “But Jim, what about that 75-yard TD pass from Earl Morrall to Terry Barr?” “Sorry, Lou, it won’t fit on the card.” I am sticking to my theory.

The Philadelphia cards are the only ones I can think of with play diagrams on the front. A couple of other issues have them on the back. One of these is the 1955 Bowman set, which has a generic play diagram on the back of most cards. Cards of players with lots of stats don’t have diagrams on them, but cards of linemen, defensive players, and rookies all do. Some of the generic diagrams appear on multiple cards, too. Filler, I tell you.

Finally, we have the 1976 Wonder Bread set, which gets my vote for the worst card backs ever. Each features a diagram one of Hank Stram’s favorite plays, along with a detailed description of the play. As a kid–or, for that matter, as an adult–I wouldn’t have given the diagrams a second look. But Stram had just taken over as the Saints’ coach in 1976, so perhaps Topps (who printed the cards for Wonder Bread) was trying to ride the buzz about that. Whatever buzz there was didn’t last long, though: even with Stram’s playbook, the Saints went 7-21 in 1976 and 1977.

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