Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

Former NFL and WFL player Rickie Harris is celebrating his 70th birthday today. Harris was a defensive back and return specialist from 1965 to 1972 for the Washington Redskins and New England Patriots. He had the NFL’s longest punt return in 1969, 86 yards for a touchdown. He finished his career in the World Football League, playing for the Florida Blazers in 1974 and the Memphis Southmen in 1975.

Harris is shown here on his 1969 Topps football card. He appeared on several other cards, as well.

Happy birthday, Mr. Harris!

The newest interactive team card in the Vintage Football Card Gallery is the 1956 Topps Cleveland Browns team card. Clicking on the image pictured here will take you to the interactive version.

The card pictures the 1955 Cleveland Browns, who won the NFL championship. Remarkably, at least six of the players on the team later became head coaches in the NFL: Otto Graham, Abe Gibron, Mike McCormack, Walt Michaels, Chuck Noll, and John Sandusky.

This is my fifth interactive 1956 Topps team card; I have seven more to go. Next up: the Baltimore Colts.

The newest interactive team card in the Vintage Football Card Gallery is the 1956 Topps Philadelphia Eagles team card. Clicking on the image pictured here will take you to the interactive version.

At least one of the players on the card will be familiar to CFL fans. After three seasons with the Eagles, Ralph Goldston played nine seasons for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, and in those nine seasons, he played in seven Grey Cups. Goldston appeared on several cards with the Tiger-Cats.

I will continue to work on the remaining 1956 Topps team cards as I have time. Next up: the Cleveland Browns.

Former NFL end Fred Dugan is celebrating his 80th birthday today. Dugan played from 1958 to 1963 for the San Francisco 49ers, Dallas Cowboys, and Washington Redskins. His best season was 1961, when he gained 817 yards on 53 receptions for the Redskins.

Dugan is shown here on his 1963 Topps football card, one of the short prints in the set. He appeared on several other cards, as well.

Dugan is the 493rd oldest living pro American football player, according to oldestlivingprofootball.com.

Happy birthday, Mr. Dugan!

This week I added 1977 Touchdown Club cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. The set contains fifty cards of players who were former NFL stars when the cards were issued. According to Beckett’s description of the set, the addresses of the players were included with the cards, so that collectors who bought the cards could mail them to the players for autographs.

The best thing about this set is that it includes some stars who had not appeared on cards during their playing careers. One of those stars, Bill Willis, is pictured here. Willis played on five AAFC and NFL championship teams with the Cleveland Browns, and he was voted first team All-NFL three times in the early 1950s. Somehow he didn’t appear on a card before this one, though. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1977, the year this card was issued.

I couldn’t decide whether to list the Touchdown Club cards under Regular Issues or Oddball, but for now they are under Regular Issues. Perhaps they belong in a new category, called Tribute Sets, along with sets like 1974 and 1975 Fleer Immortal Roll cards and 1963 Stancraft playing cards. Any opinions?

Yesterday I was looking at some 1964 Philadelphia football cards, and I happened to read the cartoon on the back of Lamar McHan’s card. The cartoon says that McHan won the Heisman Trophy. Hmm, I thought, that doesn’t sound right. So I checked my Heisman Trophy candidates page, and sure enough, the highest McHan finished in Heisman voting was ninth. Ninth is great, of course, but it isn’t first.

This is at least the second whopper I have seen in a cartoon on the back of a card. Homer Jones’s 1968 Topps football card says that “Homer defeated the Russians in the 1960 Olympics,” but that isn’t true, either. For a list of football players who did win Olympic medals, see my page of Olympic athletes on vintage football cards

Two players in the Vintage Football Card Gallery, Steve Meilinger and Don Trull, were elected this week to the College Football Hall of Fame. You can see the announcement and the rest of the new Hall of Famers on the National Football Foundation web site.

Meilinger, an end at the University of Kentucky, went on to play five seasons for the Washington Redskins, Green Bay Packers, and Pittsburgh Steelers. He is pictured here on his 1957 Topps football card.

Trull, a quarterback at Baylor, played six seasons for the Houston Oilers and Boston Patriots in the AFL, then moved to the CFL and played two seasons for the Edmonton Eskimos. He is shown here on his 1966 Topps football card.

As seniors in college, both Meilinger and Trull placed in the top ten in Heisman Trophy voting. You can see them and the other top vote-getters on my page of football cards of Heisman Trophy candidates.

The newest interactive team card in the Vintage Football Card Gallery is the 1956 Topps Chicago Cardinals card. Clicking on the image pictured here will take you to the interactive version.

This card took awhile, because the image includes a lot of players that I didn’t yet have in my database. It also includes a bunch of owners, managers, coaches, and other non-players. As usual, I found some people I wasn’t expecting: Frank Bernardi, who later appeared with the Broncos on a 1960 Fleer card, and coaches Bob Nowaskey and Tommy Thompson, who had appeared on earlier football cards as players.

I will continue to work on the remaining 1956 Topps team cards as I have time. Next up: the Philadelphia Eagles.

Over the weekend I added 1979 Coke Saints cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. Nearly all of the 1979 Saints players appear in the set. Two of them, Archie Manning and Chuck Muncie, are pictured here. I filed the set under Food and Regional Issues.

Yesterday I noticed that the player pictured on Fred Brown’s 1969 Glendale Stamp is actually Timmy Brown. Timmy Brown played for the Eagles until 1967, then played one season for the Baltimore Colts, then went on to a long acting career. Unfortunately, this is the only Fred Brown card or stamp I know of, so I don’t think his picture ever made it onto a card.

For many other cards and stamps that picture the wrong player, see the Mistaken Identities page of the Vintage Football Card Gallery.