March 14th, 2012 |
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CFL Cards, New in the Gallery
This week I added 1963 Topps CFL cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. This was my first CFL set, so most of the players were new to me. I did find a few familiar faces: Joe Kapp, Dave Mann, Pat Holmes, and Bobby Walden all appear on NFL cards, as well. Walden, I learned, was a running back and kick returner in the CFL, as well as a punter. After he moved to the NFL, he stuck to punting, though it appears from his NFL stats that he faked a few punts and ran instead.
Topps apparently really liked the image on Joe Kapp’s card, because they used the same image on his 1960, 1961, 1968, and 1969 cards, and on his 1969 mini-card. I don’t know why he is in a green jersey, though, because I don’t believe any of his teams wore green. I suspect that the image was originally a black-and-white photo from his days at the University of California, and that someone at Topps colored it. The jersey on his card resembles the one he is wearing in the photo on his College Football Hall of Fame page.
August 8th, 2010 |
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CFL Cards, Sites I Like
Here’s another 1963 Topps CFL card of a player who had a short career in the NFL. Bob Ptacek was drafted by the Cleveland Browns in 1959, spent one season with the team, then went to the CFL’s Saskatchewan Roughriders. According to his Cflapedia page, Ptacek was a jack-of-all-trades for the Roughriders, playing quarterback, linebacker, and defensive back at different times in his six seasons with the team. He made the West All-Star team twice, both times on defense.
The back of Ptacek’s card claims that “Ptacek came to the Roughriders in 1960 in a trade for Jim Marshall,” but I am skeptical about that. Ptacek and Marshall did swap teams in 1960, but I don’t think the CFL and NFL had any trading agreements (someone please correct me if I’m wrong), and Marshall’s Wikipedia page says he was drafted by the Browns in 1960, not obtained in a trade. (Ptacek’s Cflapedia page also mentions this alleged trade, but I suspect that that information came from the card.)
In 1959, before his rookie season with the Browns, Ptacek was named the MVP of the Chicago Charities College All-Star Game. This was an annual preseason game between the top college players and the NFL champions from the previous season. Amusingly, Ptacek isn’t mentioned in the game summary on the College All-Star Game web site. The Baltimore Colts dominated the game, 29-0, but the MVP was always chosen from the college team, and Ptacek apparently had a few bright moments for the All-Stars.
Ptacek appeared on a Topps CFL card each year from 1961 to 1965. So far I have just his 1963 card, but you can see the rest on eBay.
August 5th, 2010 |
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CFL Cards
I am developing an interest in old CFL cards, but there are a lot of them out there, and it is hard to decide which ones to collect. I thought that I would start by picking up a few CFL cards of players who also played in the NFL or AFL. Some of these players–Sam Etcheverry comes to mind–started in the CFL, did well, and then got opportunity in one of the U.S. leagues. (This happened a lot in the early 1960s, when the AFL was formed and the NFL expanded.) Others started in the NFL, lost their places on the roster, and had more success in the CFL. Still others–Babe Parilli, for example–bounced around between the three leagues.
Pictured here is an example of a player who started in the NFL but had more success in the CFL. Ernie Danjean was drafted in 1957 by the Packers, but he spent only one season with the team. In 1959 he joined the Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the CFL. He played two years for Hamilton, and then three for the Calgary Stampeders. He appeared on at least three CFL cards with Calgary: the 1963 Topps card shown here; a 1962 Post Cereal card, which you can see on his cflapedia page; and a 1964 Topps CFL card, which you can find on eBay.
As you can see, the fronts of 1963 Topps CFL cards are plain compared to their NFL counterparts. The backs of the cards in the two sets are essentially the same, except that the text on the CFL card backs is printed in both English and French. A piece of red cellophane would reveal the answers to the “mystery quiz” questions on cards in either set. I have a bit of that cellophane somewhere–if only I could find it!
