July 28th, 2009 |
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error cards
A couple of weeks ago I added a search for error cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery, and since then I have been documenting the error cards in my database. Here are a couple more I never noticed: the 1959 Topps Jim Ray Smith and Dave Middleton cards have the wrong team logos on the front. In fact, the logos appear to be switched! I thought that if I looked at the cards’ placement on an uncut sheet, I might see how their logos could have been swapped, but the two cards are not close together on the sheet. Perhaps it is just coincidence that Smith got Middleton’s Lion and Middleton got Smith’s Brown.
The 1959 Topps set has a large number of errors besides these swapped logos: misspelled names, incorrect player positions, a card picturing the wrong player, typos in the stats, and so on. I’m not sure how far to go with documenting the errors. Does anyone care if Bill Glass is a center on the front of the card and a tackle on the back?
July 27th, 2009 |
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Player Deaths | 1 Comment
Bob Boyd, a receiver for the Los Angeles Rams from 1950 to 1957, passed away earlier this month. With Norm Van Brocklin quarterbacking, Boyd led the NFL in receiving yards in 1954 with 1212.
Pictured here is Boyd’s rookie card, a brilliant 1951 Bowman. He also appeared on 1955 Bowman, 1957 Topps, and 1958 Topps cards.
July 26th, 2009 |
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Funny Poses | 6 Comments
July 25th, 2009 |
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Player Bios, Sites I Like | 1 Comment
A few weeks ago I posted an entry about the impressive Ed Meador Hall of Fame Nomination site. Other people have their own favorite Hall of Fame candidates, of course, and some of them have built web sites, too. One such site is Crazy Canton Cuts, which at last count made a case for 39 players! In particular, the site owner would like to see Chris Hanburger inducted, and he has started a petition in Hanburger’s behalf.
Another site, Remember the AFL is dedicated to the American Football League, and it makes the case for 42 ex-AFL players. This list of candidates overlaps only a little with that of Crazy Canton Cuts, so the two sites together promote over 60 candidates.
Finally, a Google search for “pro football hall of fame petition” turns up a raft of petitions for individual players. A few not included in the sites above are L. C. Greenwood, John Brodie, Andre Tippett, Rickey Jackson, and Glenn Presnell.
So, in total, what is that, 65 or 70 candidates? Plenty of good reading, for sure. But wait a minute, then there’s Jerry Kramer, Alex Karras, Ken Stabler, Ken Anderson…
Tags:
Alex Karras,
Andre Tippett,
Chris Hanburger,
Glenn Presnell,
Hall of Fame,
Jerry Kramer,
John Brodie,
Ken Anderson,
Ken Stabler,
L. C. Greenwood,
Rickey Jackson
July 24th, 2009 |
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error cards, New in the Gallery
Last week I added an error card search to the Vintage Football Card Gallery, and since then I have been marking the error cards in my database. Here’s a good one: it’s a 1967 Philadelphia Raymond Berry card, but the image on the card is not Raymond Berry. Who is it? Check out the latest entry on my Mistaken Identities page.
My old Beckett catalog also lists a couple of other cards where the wrong player is pictured, but I can’t find other photos of the players to see for myself. One is 1955 Topps All-American #91, Bob Odell, which Beckett says pictures Howard Odell. Another is 1972 Topps #174, Adrian Young, which Beckett says pictures Rick Duncan. If I find other photos of these players, I will add the cards to the Mistaken Identites page.
July 23rd, 2009 |
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Football Card Trivia | 7 Comments
If you browse through the 1952-1954 Bowman cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery, you will find a few that show the player with a white football. Two are pictured here: a 1953 Bowman Fran Polsfoot and a 1954 Bowman Doak Walker. According to profootballresearchers.org, the NFL and AAFC used a white football in night games from 1929 to 1956, to help the players see the ball in poor lighting. Wikipedia’s article on the Cleveland Browns says that in the 1950s, the NFL also prohibited teams from wearing white helmets and jerseys in night games, so that the white ball could be seen against the players’ uniforms. Some teams thus had different helmets and jerseys for day and night games.
The other mysterious white football is the big, ugly one with the player’s name in it that is part of the design of 1953 Bowman cards. To me, the big football overwhelms the rest of the card and makes the 1953 set the least attractive of the early Bowmans. Might it have been inspired by the NFL’s use of the white ball? On Pete Pihos’s card, Bowman actually put the big white ball in his hands!
July 21st, 2009 |
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Adventures in Card Dealing, General Collecting Info
A customer once bought a Lions team card from me because his friend played for the Lions the year the card was printed. Unfortunately, his friend wasn’t in the picture, and the customer got upset. What he didn’t realize is that the card companies would use the same photos year after year, and the photo on his team card was an old one. I explained and offered a refund, but I didn’t hear back from him.
Here are the cards I used to demonstrate to him that I wasn’t making it up. The Philadelphia Gum Company used the same image of Mick Tingelhoff in 1964, 1965, and 1967. (They used a different image in 1966, but it wasn’t as good as this one.) If you browse through the Football Card Gallery, you can find many more instances where the card companies reused photos. Joe Namath is another good example: look for the Band-Aid on his head in cards from 1968 through 1970.
Sometimes the companies would even recolor the player’s uniform if he happened to change teams. John Henry Johnson’s 1957 Topps card, which I showed in an earlier post, is a great example–though in this case, Topps got John Henry’s new team wrong.
July 19th, 2009 |
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error cards, Football Card Trivia | 1 Comment
In a post last month I showed that the image on Bill Wade’s 1960 Topps card is reversed. Looking at my Beckett’s catalog this week, I found that the image on Doug Atkins’s 1960 Topps card is reversed as well. It’s not obvious when you look at that card by itself, but it is when you put it alongside his 1961 Fleer card. It’s funny how you can look at a card a hundred times and not notice an error like this.
I did a little ‘net search to look for bits of trivia about Atkins, and I found that he has an official site. The quotes by John Unitas and Jim Parker are worth a look.
July 17th, 2009 |
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error cards, New in the Gallery | 1 Comment
Today I added the ability to search for error cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. You can combine that search with other searches and find, for example, all error cards of hall-of-famers or all error cards of Philadelphia Eagles. To do the fancy searches, see the Advanced Search page.
Though I have the search working, I don’t yet have all of the error cards identified in my database. If your favorite error card is missing, leave a comment and I’ll get it in.
Can you spot the error on the 1969 Topps Sonny Jurgensen card shown here?
July 16th, 2009 |
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Player Deaths
Pat Brady‘s granddaughter sent me a note a couple of days ago and told me that her grandfather had passed away. Brady was a quarterback and star punter for the Pittsburgh Steelers. According to RGJ.com, in the three years he played in the NFL, he led the league in punting average twice. In college at Nevada, he once kicked a 99-yard punt, the longest possible.
Pictured here is Brady’s rookie card, a 1953 Bowman.
