November 12th, 2009 | Published in Football Card Trivia, New in the Gallery
Today I put together another virtual uncut sheet page, this time for 1969 Topps football cards. The page includes both the first and second series sheets. These are the first sheets I’ve seen where half of the cards were printed upside down.
(Click on the image to see both full sheets.)
November 8th, 2009 | Published in Interesting eBay Auctions, Interesting Message Board Threads | 2 Comments
There’s a fun thread developing on the Collectors Universe message boards: collectors there are posting their worst miscut cards. Here’s my entry, a 1963 Topps Tom Bettis with -5/105 centering. It’s nowhere near as bad as the other cards posted, though. Check out the severely miscut ones.
Just out of curiosity, I did a little search for “miscut” on eBay. Most of the results are ordinary miscuts like my Bettis card, but at the moment there’s a half-and-half baseball card and a hockey card that shows parts of four cards. Here are the searches: baseball, hockey, football.
November 3rd, 2009 | Published in Trivia Questions
Question #6: What do the five players pictured on these football cards have in common?
Scroll down slowly; the answer is after the sponsored links. For more information on a card, click on it or hold your cursor over it.
Answer: They coached the Pittsburgh Steelers together.
This is the coaches card from the 1968 KDKA Steelers set.
October 31st, 2009 | Published in General Collecting Info, Oddball | 2 Comments
There are lots of scary images on old football cards, but this Don Hutson 1963 Stancraft playing card struck me as the Halloweeniest. He looks like he’s wearing a homemade super hero costume. Add a pair of antennae, and he could be Ant Man!
The 1963 Stancrafts are an interesting set. I have read that they were issued for the opening of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963, so though most of the players in the set eventually became Hall of Famers, only 17 were members the year the set was printed. (Hutson was one of the initial 17; you can see the rest on the Pro Football Hall of Fame site.) The cards were issued as a two-deck bridge set: one deck with red backs and one deck with green backs in a red plastic tray.
You can see the full set of 1963 Stancraft Playing Cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.
October 30th, 2009 | Published in ABCs of Vintage Football Cards, Sites I Like | 1 Comment
The first set of football cards was the 1894 Mayo Cut Plug tobacco card series. The 35-card set, which was distributed in tins of chewing tobacco, includes only college players from Princeton, Harvard, and Yale. There is a nice article about the Mayo cards on The Harvard-Yale Football Gallery, a site dedicated to the Harvard-Yale rivalry. According to the article, one of the Princeton players in the set, “Poe,” was related to Edgar Allan Poe. Another card in the set pictures an unnamed Yale player, initially listed as “Anonymous,” but later identified as John Dunlop. The Dunlop card is the rarest card in the set.
You can see the entire set of 1894 Mayo Cut Plug cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. A big thanks to Goodwin and Co. Auctions for allowing me to use their scans.
October 29th, 2009 | Published in Sites I Like, Trivia Questions
Here’s an easy one.
Question #5: What do the three players pictured on these football cards have in common?
Scroll down slowly; the answer is after the sponsored links. For more information on a card, click on it or hold your cursor over it.
Answer: Each of them once held the NFL record for longest field goal. For a nice article on the record, see The Longest Field Goal in NFL History: Evolution of the Record.
| Player | Team | Yards | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pete Henry | Canton Bulldogs | 45 | 1922 |
| Glenn Presnell | Detroit Lions | 54 | 1934 |
| Bert Rechichar | Baltimore Colts | 56 | 1953 |
| Tom Dempsey | New Orleans Saints | 63 | 1970 |
| Jason Elam | Denver Broncos | 63 (tie) | 1998 |
October 29th, 2009 | Published in New in the Gallery
Yesterday I added 1935 National Chicle cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. What a beautiful set! My favorite cards are the Pittsburgh Pirates, in their bumblebee uniforms. (The Pirates became the Steelers in 1939.)
For more about the set, see N is for National Chicle in my ABCs of Vintage Football Cards series.
October 27th, 2009 | Published in Players Who Became Actors
I knew that Fred Williamson had been in movies after his football days, and today I did a search to check out what he films he had done. I had no idea! Williamson’s IMDB page lists 110 acting roles, as well as 20-some films he wrote, directed, or produced. And he’s still at it: 9 of the movies are still in production!
I must confess, other than his appearances in M*A*S*H (as Captain “Spearchucker” Jones) and on Monday Night Football, I don’t think I have seen any of Williamson’s work. I’m just not much of an action movie fan, I guess. But next time “Fist of Fear” or “Vegas Vampires” comes up in conversation, I’ll now be able to say, “Hey, wasn’t Fred Williamson in that? I have all of his football cards!” And everyone will be impressed.
Shown here is Williamson’s rookie card, a 1962 Fleer. The video below is a nice synopsis of his football career and film work.
October 26th, 2009 | Published in Trivia Questions
Here is the latest trivia question.
Question #4: What do the four players pictured on these 1958 Topps football cards have in common?
Scroll down slowly; the answer is after the sponsored links. For more information on a card, click on it or hold your cursor over it.
Answer: All of them were out of football in 1959, but each of them came back to join an AFL team in 1960. Carmichael went to the Broncos, Blanda and Waller to the Oilers, and Wells to the Patriots.
October 23rd, 2009 | Published in ABCs of Vintage Football Cards, Football Card Oddities, Football Card Trivia | 8 Comments
The Leaf Gum Company printed football cards in 1948 and 1949. The cards from the two years are very similar. In fact, except for the variations in the 1948 cards, for players who appear in both sets, the fronts of the cards appear identical. The backs are different for the two years, fortunately, and the copyright date on the bottom of the back tells which year a card is from. Shown here are Leaf’s two Herb Seigert cards, the first from 1948, and the second from 1949.
The images on the Leaf cards started as black and white photos, and then someone colored the images’ backgrounds and the players’ uniforms. On some cards, such as the Harry Szulborski card below, the coloring makes it look as if the player’s head was cut out and pasted on a colored background.
My favorite feature of the Leaf cards is that many have both the player’s first name and nickname on the front: ‘Slingin’ Sammy Baugh, ‘Bullet’ Bill Dudley, Charlie ‘Choo Choo’ Justice, and so on. A quick bit of trivia: which player’s nickname is in double quotes? Answer: Clyde “Bulldog” Turner‘s.
The 1948 Leaf set consists of 98 cards, with cards 1-49 being easier to find and cards 50-98 being difficult. The set features both pro and college players, with slightly more than half of the cards being pros. The bigger stars of the day–mostly pros–are concentrated in the first half of the set, and most of the college players are in the second half.
The set contains many variations: mostly in the colors used, but in the players’ names as well. The 1948 Leaf set composition page on PSA’s web site lists most of the variations, but I don’t believe it is complete. It lists two variations of the Pete Pihos rookie card, for example, one with yellow numbers and one with blue. I have also seen a variation with greenish numbers, though. It is pictured here with the yellow-numbered version for contrast.
Because there had been no major football card issues since 1935 National Chicle, all of the 1948 Leaf football cards are rookie cards. Fourteen of the players in the set are of Hall of Famers, making it a key set for Hall of Fame rookie card collectors. Fortunately for those collectors, only two of the Hall of Fame players–namely Leo Nomellini and Chuck Bednarik–are in the tougher second half of the set. (Nomellini and Bednarik were both still in college at the time.) An article by Kevin Glew on the Collectors Universe web site lists the Hall of Famers and describes the other challenges facing 1948 Leaf collectors.
Compared to the 1948 Leaf set, the 1949 Leafs are not very interesting. The 1949 set contains only 49 cards, all pro players, and there are no new players in the set. Also, as I wrote above, there is no perceptible difference in the card fronts for players who appear in both sets. So Leaf’s 1949 offer was essentially half of 1948’s cards, but with different backs.
One odd thing about the 1949 set is that it is skip-numbered, with the numbers of its 49 cards scattered between 1 and 150. When I first learned this, I wondered if Leaf had intended to release more cards to fill in the gaps. It turns out, though, that they also skip-numbered their 1949 baseball set. That suggests to me that they were trying to trick kids into buying more cards, even if they already had the whole set. I’d call that just plain mean. It’s not surprising that this was Leaf’s last football set.
You can see all of the 1948 Leaf and 1949 Leaf cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.
