Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

A few weeks ago, when I reported that Cliff Livingston had passed away, Pastor Scott pointed out that Livingston’s 1962 Post Cereal card showed him with the Giants, and his 1962 Topps card showed him with the Vikings. Scott also named four other players who appeared on different teams on their 1962 Post and 1962 Topps cards. In all five cases, the player had been traded in the off-season, Post listed him with his old team, and Topps listed him with his new one. Post apparently was aware of the trades, because on four of the five cards, they added a footnote showing the player’s new team. Perhaps the cards were already close to production, and it was easier to add footnotes to the cards, rather than change their text.

Here are the cards that Pastor Scott pointed out:

The Browns traded Bobby Mitchell along with Leroy Jackson to the Redskins for Heisman winner Ernie Davis. (Davis contracted leukemia and never played.) Mitchell’s 1962 Post Cereal card shows him with the Browns; his 1962 Topps card shows him with the Redskins.

The Browns traded Milt Plum, Tom Watkins, and Dave Lloyd to the Lions for Howard Cassady, Bill Glass, and Jim Ninowski. Post had both Plum and Cassady with their old teams.

The Eagles traded Bill Barnes to the Redskins with Bob Freeman for Jim Schrader and Ben Scotti. Barnes’s Post Cereal card shows him still with the Eagles; his Topps card shows him with the Redskins.

Finally, the Giants traded Cliff Livingston to the Vikings for Dick Pesonen and a draft pick. Here are Livingston’s two 1962 cards:

Art Faircloth, a back for the New York Giants in 1947 and 1948, passed away on April 1. In his two years with the Giants, Faircloth played in a total of five games, doing a little of everything: he had eleven career rushes, three passes, three interceptions, four punts, and two kick returns.

Though his career was short, Faircloth appeared on a football card, the 1948 Bowman pictured here.

Don Flynn, who played for the Dallas Texans and New York Titans in 1960 and 1961, passed away on April 14. He appeared on one football card that I know of, the 1960 Fleer card pictured here. Flynn’s obituary at tulsaworld.com includes a nice picture of him with Bill Meek, his college coach at the University of Houston. There is a recent photo of Flynn and his granddaughters at fanbase.com.

Though his card says he was a quarterback, Flynn spent his playing time in the AFL at defensive back. He had five career interceptions in the AFL, returning one of them for a touchdown.

Prior to his days in the AFL, Flynn spent one season, 1958, in the Canadian Football League, playing running back for the Edmonton Eskimos. His page at cflapedia.com shows his stats for the season. An article at tylerpaper.com says that Edmonton and the Dallas Texans “vied for Flynn’s services,” but that probably is not correct, since the Texans did not exist in 1958.

One of the perks of this business is that I often get notes from players’ relatives and friends. Occasionally I even hear from the players themselves. Yesterday I got an email from Lee Folkins, who played for the Packers, Cowboys, and Steelers from 1961 to 1965. What he told me was interesting: he said that the signature on his 1964 Wheaties Stamp is not his. Pictured here is the stamp in question.

The signatures on the Wheaties Stamps are facsimiles, printed right on the stamps, but because the handwriting is different from stamp to stamp, I presumed that they were copies of the players’ actual signatures. Apparently not all of them are. This isn’t too surprising: Topps printed the stamps for Wheaties, and Topps was known to alter players’ images, even before the 1970s airbrushing era. (For some examples, see my article on the inset photos on 1962 Topps cards.) It’s not much of a stretch to go from altering images to faking simulated autographs.

I had actually wondered how Topps got signatures for all of the players in a large set, considering that they often didn’t even seem to have good photos of all the players. For at least one set, 1970 Supers, Topps didn’t even attempt to obtain the players’ real signatures: they used the same script for the facsimile signature on every card. (See my article on the 1970 Topps Super set.) For other sets–the 1964 Wheaties Stamps, for example–I suppose that they used whatever authentic signatures they had, then employees created signatures for the rest.

I don’t know much about autographs, so I did a quick internet search to see if it’s commonly known that some of the facsimile signatures on vintage cards were faked. I didn’t find anything that explicitly said so, but I did find this paragraph on thehistorybank.com:

Finally, remember that Topps’ player facsimile autographs on cards are just that—facsimiles with no intent of looking real. Interestingly, Topps put facsimile signatures on cards for years, but don’t try to “authenticate” using those signatures. They often do not match the real thing. Note here that Marshall’s and Averill’s hand-signed signatures match the facsimile signatures fairly closely, but Narleski’s ballpoint signature bears no resemblance to the printed signature on the card.

Unfortunately, the image in the History Bank article is too small to compare the two Ray Narleski signatures, but perhaps Narleski’s ballpoint signature bears no resemblance to the printed signature because the printed signature isn’t his. An autograph collector would certainly know more about this than I do. Can anyone else provide comments or examples?

Back to Mr. Folkins. Besides his Wheaties stamp, he appeared on one card that I know of: the 1964 Philadelphia card shown here. Both his stamp and card were issued the year after he made the Pro Bowl. All of the players on the 1964 Wheaties Stamps, in fact, were 1963 Pro Bowlers. You can read more about the Wheaties Stamps and accompanying album in a previous blog article.

My friend Andy sent me this scan last week; it’s a wrapper from a five-cent pack of 1961 Topps football cards. He asked if I could use it for my wrapper page. Sure thing, Andy–I cropped it and added it to the page this morning.

The five-cent wrapper features an illustration of a cloth emblem insert. I presume that these inserts were included in five-cent packs, but not in one-cent packs–a bonus for kids who splurged and spent a nickel. Somewhere along the line we started calling these inserts “flocked stickers.” Why? Just a guess, but I’d say some price guide writer needed a name for them, hadn’t seen a wrapper or a checklist, and decided to show off his vocabulary. See I is for Inserts for a description of the cloth emblems and a picture of one.

Thanks, Andy!

This uncut sheet of 1946 Sears Cleveland Browns cards was on eBay last week. 1946 was the Browns’ first year; they were part of the new eight-team All-American Football Conference. The Browns were the AAFC champions all four years of the league’s existence, 1946-1949, and they joined the NFL when the AAFC folded in 1950. As far as I know, these Sears cards were the only cards printed of an AAFC team.

Conspicuously absent from this set are Marion Motley and Bill Willis, African American stars who later made the Pro Football Hall of Fame. According to Willis’s Wikipedia page, the two did not play in the Browns’ 1946 game against the Miami Seahawks, because they were forbidden by law to play against white players in Miami.

This small Sears set contains pre-rookie cards of three other Hall of Fame players: Otto Graham, Dante Lavelli, and Frank Gatski. (For more pre-rookie cards, see my pre-rookie card page.) The black-and-white head shots are nice, but otherwise the cards are unremarkable: all eight have the same ad on the front and the team’s 1946 schedule on the back.

The set is rare–these particular cards are the first I have seen–so it is hard to assign a value to the cards. The highest bid in this auction was $2000, and it did not meet the seller’s reserve. Perhaps the seller will list it again with a better description and a scan that shows the corners of the sheet.

For more interesting auctions, see my other Interesting eBay Auctions articles.

Here is the answer to a trivia question that Pastor Scott asked a few weeks ago. The question was “What player appeared on two different cards in one year for two different teams and two different leagues? Both cards were major card companies.” Scott had to tell me: it’s Corky Tharp.

Pictured here is Tharp’s 1960 Topps CFL card. He played for the Toronto Argonauts in 1955 and from 1957 to 1959, and Topps evidently expected him to stay with the team in 1960. He didn’t, though. He instead joined the New York Titans (later the Jets) of the new American Football League, and he appeared on a 1960 Fleer AFL card, as well. He spent one season with the Titans, playing nine games at defensive back.

While the fronts of 1960 Topps CFL cards are much different than their NFL counterparts, the backs of the cards in the two sets are alike. The only difference is that the text on the CFL cards is repeated in French. Even the text in the cartoon, which you can faintly see on this card, appears in both French and English. You can also see that repeating the text didn’t leave much room for detail.

I really like the fronts of the cards, with the colored portraits over the black and white action photos. Topps had used black and white photos for backgrounds in their classic 1955 Topps All-American set, and they would use them again as insets on their 1962 NFL cards. In 1962 they matched the inset photos with the players on the cards–or most of them, anyway–but they did not do that on the 1960 CFL cards. The photos on the CFL cards appear to be random, and Topps used each photo on multiple cards.

There are 88 cards in the 1960 CFL set, and for vintage AFL and NFL card collectors, it includes a few familiar names. Veryl Switzer, Ken Carpenter, and Tobin Rote had played in the NFL in the 50s, and Rote went on to play for the Chargers and Broncos in the 60s. Randy Duncan, Ernie Warlick, and Gerry McDougall also joined AFL teams in the 60s. And Joe Kapp and Sam Etcheverry later quarterbacked in the NFL.

Wayne Patrick, who played fullback for the Buffalo Bills from 1968 to 1972, passed away on March 23. For most of his career, Patrick was the lead blocker for O.J. Simpson. He gained over 1000 yards rushing, as well.

The sharp 1972 Topps card shown here was Patrick’s only appearance on a mainstream football card. He also appeared on a 1972 Sunoco stamp.

Altie Taylor, who played eight years for the Lions and Oilers, passed away on March 14. Taylor led the Lions in rushing for three of his seven years with the team, and he was Detroit’s all-time leading rusher when he left for Houston. He is now the team’s fourth all-time leading rusher.

Like Merlin Olsen, who died three days earlier, Taylor was a Utah State alumnus. He had a 105-yard kickoff return for the Aggies in 1967, still a school record.

Taylor’s rookie card is the 1971 Topps card pictured here. He also appeared on a few others, but I don’t have pictures of the newer ones. The ones I don’t have can be found on eBay.

Cliff Livingston, who played linebacker twelve years for the Giants, Vikings, and Rams, died on March 13. He played in four NFL championship games with the Giants, and they won one of them, in 1956. Livingston was an All-Pro in one season, 1961.

Though he had a long, successful career, Livingston appeared on only one regular issue card, the 1962 Topps card shown here. He also appeared on a 1962 Post Cereal card.

Livingston’s brother, Howie Livingston, also played in the NFL.