Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

Yesterday I added virtual uncut sheets of 1971 Topps football cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. The sheets are not quite complete, but if you happen to have any badly miscut 1971 Topps cards in your collection, perhaps you can help fill in the holes. Click on the image below to see the sheets so far.

The Gallery now includes virtual uncut sheets, partial and whole, for 29 football card sets. For the full list, see one of my previous blog articles, U is for Uncut Sheets.

Curt Knight, who was the kicker for the Washington Redskins from 1969 to 1973, is celebrating his 70th birthday today. Knight was the NFC’s leading scorer in 1971, and he made the Pro Bowl that season. He was a member of the Redskins team that played in Super Bowl VII against the Miami Dolphins.

Knight’s long path to the NFL included playing at the Coast Guard Academy under coach Otto Graham. He describes his career in an interview at mineralwellindex.com.

Knight is pictured here on his rookie card, a 1971 Topps. He appeared on several other football cards, as well.

Happy birthday, Mr. Knight!

The holiday made me think of the movie, and thinking of the movie made me wonder what NFL players were born on the Fourth of July. I found the full list at pro-football-reference.com; the eight who appear in the Vintage Football Card Gallery are shown below. Wish them a happy birthday!

Six-time Pro Bowler Erich Barnes was born on July 4, 1935. Barnes’s rookie card, shown here, is a 1960 Topps. Two-time Pro-Bowler Emerson Boozer was born on July 4, 1943; he is shown here on his 1971 Topps card. (Boozer also appeared on my all-party team.)

Two-time Pro Bowler Rosey Taylor was born on July 4, 1937; he is pictured here on his 1965 Philadelphia card. 1963 Pro-Bowler Lee Folkins was born on July 4, 1939; his rookie card, a 1964 Philadelphia, is shown here. (I heard from Mr. Folkins once. He told me that the signature on his 1964 Wheaties Stamp is not in his handwriting.)

Five-time Pro-Bowler Rick Casares was born on July 4, 1931. His rookie card, shown here, is a 1955 Bowman. Hall of Famer Floyd Little was born on July 4, 1942; he is shown here on his 1968 Topps Stand Up insert card.

1981 Pro Bowler Frank Lewis was born on July 4, 1947; his rookie card, a 1973 Topps, is shown here. And, finally, Fred Forsberg was born on July 4, 1944. I don’t believe Forsberg appeared on a card, but I do have his 1972 Sunoco Stamp.

Enjoy your picnics!

Did you know that the card companies sometimes hired photographers from the DMV to take pictures for sports cards? As you can see from these examples, it’s true. Those DMV folks are experts at catching people with their eyes closed. At least driver’s licenses expire after a few years. People keep sports cards forever!

So, who are our sleepy players, and what cards do they appear on? From the top, we have:

• 1950 Bowman Bob Kelly, of the original Baltimore Colts (also see Baltimore Colts in Green?)
• 1951 Bowman Al Derogatis
• 1967 Topps Babe Parilli
• 1969 Topps Don Maynard (Maynard is also sleepy on his 1967 Topps and 1968 Topps cards)
• 1970 Topps Mike Tilleman
• 1971 Topps Gerry Philbin

I am undoubtedly missing some. If you know ’em, post ’em!

Milt Morin, who played tight end for ten seasons with the Cleveland Browns, passed away on July 9. Morin was selected for the Pro Bowl twice, in 1968 and 1971. He played college football at the University of Massachusetts, and he is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame’s class of 2010.

Pictured here is Morin’s rookie card, a 1971 Topps, issued in his sixth year in the league–and three years after his first Pro Bowl. Topps compensated for their omission by including a card of Morin in each of their sets from 1971 to 1975. He also appeared on a 1972 Sunoco Stamp.

As I wrote in R is for Rookie Cards, the term “rookie card” is a misnomer. Pictured here is an extreme example: Ken Iman’s rookie card, a 1971 Topps, which was printed in his twelfth year as a pro. Offhand, I can’t think of any another rookie card that was issued that far into an active player’s career. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some, though. If you can think of an example, leave a comment.

I would not have realized that Iman had been in the league a long time by 1971, except that he also appeared on a card ten years earlier, in the 1961 Lake to Lake Packers set. (See K is for KDKA–and Other Regional Sets.) I actually had to look him up to verify that it was the same Ken Iman on both cards. Collectors generally agree that a player’s rookie card has to come from a major set, so his Lake to Lake card doesn’t count as his rookie card.

Iman apparently had established himself as a solid player by the 70s, because he also appeared on 1973, 1974, and 1975 Topps cards. (It helped that Topps started producing monstrous 528-card sets in 1973.) Ironically, though he appeared on a card in 1975, he did not play that year.

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.

Topps has printed football cards every year from 1955 to 2009, but since this is a vintage football card blog, I need to stop somewhere. Which years are considered vintage? There is no official definition, but most collectors put the end of the vintage era between 1970 and 1975. As a kid, I collected cards until 1973, so that’s where I’ll stop with this article.

1970 Topps

The 1970 Topps football set is the only set I completed as a kid. I’m not nostalgic about it. Looking at all of the football sets that preceded it–Topps and otherwise–I think the 1970 Topps set is drab. As in 1958 and 1967, Topps used a portrait style on their 1970 cards, and the “matting” covers a large portion of the images. Also, starting in 1970, Topps no longer had the rights to print team logos on cards. In 1968 and 1969, Topps used the team logos to dress up the cards, but in 1970 the logos were gone. Not only that, but in 1970, Topps used only player photos that did not include helmets, in order to avoid showing the team logos on them. Sets prior to 1970 included a lot of nice photos of players with their helmets, but starting in 1970, if Topps showed a helmet on a card, they had to airbrush its logo away.

Like the 1969 Topps set, the 1970 Topps set was released in two series of 132 cards. Card #132, the second series checklist, was included in both series, so it is a double print. As in the 1969 set, some of the second series 1970 cards have scratch-off backs. As in 1969, most of them went unscratched. (See S is for Scratch-Offs.)

Though I’m not fond of the set, there was one great thing about it: every second series pack included a Super Glossy insert card. The 1970 Topps Super Glossies are easily my favorite insert set, and perhaps my favorite set overall.

1971 Topps

1971 Topps is my favorite regular 1970s set. The colored borders on the 1971 Topps cards make them brighter than the other 70s Topps cards, and also more challenging to find in high grade. (Cards of AFC players have red borders; cards of NFC players have blue ones.) The cards don’t have team logos on them, but the little cartoon football players on the front are kind of fun. There’s a different cartoon player for each position.

The 1971 Topps set was the first set to acknowledge the players that were All-Pros the previous season. The All-Pros’ cards have borders that are half blue and half red, like the Paul Warfield card shown here. The 1971 Topps set was another 263-card set released in two series, and its second series checklist appeared in the first series, as well.

It is in the 1971 Topps set that we see the first airbrushed helmets. Though the set doesn’t include any “in action” cards labeled as such, three of the regular cards–Joe Kapp, Jake Scott, and Dennis Shaw–show images of the players in action, and the logos on their helmets have been airbrushed away. This was the start of a dreadful practice.

1972 Topps

In 1972, Topps fully embraced airbrushing. The 1972 set included 42 “Pro Action” cards, and the helmets on those had to be airbrushed. Topps also used sideline photos for a few players, and they had to airbrush the helmets on those, as well. While they were at it, if a player had been traded to a different team, Topps just airbrushed an old photo to give him new colors. Why bother getting a new photo when you can just airbrush an old one?

The 1972 Topps set did have some firsts: it was the first to include “league leaders” cards, and it was the first to include cards for the previous year’s playoff games. Both of those are nice features. It was also the first to give All-Pro players both a regular card and an All-Pro card–overkill, if you ask me. Some star players–Floyd Little, for example–appear on four cards: regular, All-Pro, league leaders, and Pro Action.

This set was also the first–and, to my knowledge, only–football set to be released in three series. The third series appears to have been an afterthought. Why do I think this? Well, the first two 1972 series had a total of 263 cards, like the full 1969, 1970, and 1971 sets. The second series checklists from those sets appeared in both the first and second series, and so did the 1972 second series checklist. If Topps had planned a third series in 1972, wouldn’t they have continued this pattern and included a third series checklist in the second series? Also, 38 of the 88 third series cards are All-Pro and Pro Action cards, basically fillers. The remaining 50 cards are player cards, and though a few are Hall of Famers, none of them are major stars. The biggest names of the day–Unitas, Sayers, Simpson, Bradshaw, Namath, Staubach, Butkus, Griese, and Dawson–are all in the first or second series. And none of the league leaders who appear on cards 1 through 8 are among the player cards in the third series.

The third series was also released very late in 1972. I know I had lost interest in cards by the time they came out, because the only third series cards I had in my childhood collection were from a pack my brother gave me for Christmas. Evidently not many other kids bought the third series cards, either, because when I resumed collecting in 1989, they were scarce and worth much more than cards from the first two series. Larry Fritsch Cards apparently bought a lot of unopened third series cards, though, and as Fritsch has been selling them, the prices have fallen. Not only have a lot of third series cards entered the market recently, but they’ve all been brand new! Fritsch still has unopened boxes of 1972 Topps third series cards for sale.

1973 Topps

In 1973, Topps went to the other extreme and released all of their football cards in a single series. If the modern era is defined by large sets released in a single series, then 1973 is the beginning of the modern era for football cards. Topps was now clearly going for quantity over quality: there are 528 cards in the 1973 Topps set, and they are the plainest of the plain. Gone are any nice touches, even simple things like using the team’s colors in the little ribbon on the left side of the cards. Topps did, at least, use the same ribbon colors for all of the players on the same team. All St. Louis Cardinals cards, for example, have blue-and-orange ribbons.

Surprisingly, though Topps dramatically increased the number of cards in their set in 1973, they omitted some of the special cards they introduced in 1972. Like the 1972 set, the 1973 Topps set contains league leader cards and cards of the previous year’s playoff games, but it does not include Pro Action or All-Pro cards. The 1973 set does include three funky boyhood picture cards, but the bulk of the set is player cards. The large increase in the number of player cards meant that a lot of players made their first appearance on a card in 1973. I might be off by a card or two, but I count 196 rookie cards in the 1973 set! To me, the number of new faces is the set’s best feature.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a 70s set without some serious airbrushing. Here are a couple of beauties. The Paul Robinson card looks like a face-in-hole picture.

As I said at the top, 1973 was the last year I collected cards as a kid. Coincidentally, that’s about the end of what most collectors consider the vintage era. It’s also when Topps appeared to go into full cost control mode. By 1973, Topps was using the sparest of designs, they evidently chose not to spend money to license team logos, and they crudely airbrushed old photos of players rather than acquiring new ones. If I remember correctly, they did not include inserts in packs of 1973 cards, either.

I presume that with no competition, the company was just minimizing costs to maximize profits. Or, maybe, because inflation was high in the 70s, they were trying to reduce costs so they could keep prices low. Their customers–kids like me–didn’t care much what the cards looked like, so long as our favorite players were on them. Now, though, as vintage card collectors, we have dozens of old sets to choose from, and I prefer most 50s and 60s cards to those from the 70s.

• Previous: T is for Topps, Part 3: 1964-1969
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• All of the ABCs

I read an article a long time ago–perhaps in Sports Collectors Digest?–written by someone who collected players’ last cards. A player’s last card has advantages over his rookie card, the collector said: It describes the highlights of the player’s nearly finished career, and it includes his nearly complete lifetime stats. It is likely to be from the player’s actual last year, whereas his rookie card is probably not from his rookie year at all. And, of course, it’s probably much cheaper than the player’s rookie card. Cool idea, I thought, and it stuck with me until now.

Here’s a nice example: a 1971 Topps Bart Starr card. Starr played in only four games in 1971, his last year, so the stats on the back of the card are close to his lifetime stats. The text lists the numerous Packer records he set in his career. And the price is 5-10% of what you’d pay for his rookie card.

Not all last cards are as nice as Starr’s, of course. Some don’t list all of the player’s stats, just his previous year and lifetime stats. Some, like John Unitas’s 1974 Topps card, show the player with an unfamiliar team. And some, like Joe Namath’s 1973 Topps card, are from well before the player’s last year. (Namath played until 1977.) But you can have all of these problems with rookie cards, as well.

All this considered, I still think it’s a cool idea.

• Buy Bart Starr cards from: Nearmint’s Cards, eBay

Compared to quarterbacks, running backs, receivers, and even kickers, defensive players often got short shrift when the card companies chose the players to put on their cards. The 1968 Topps Stand Up insert set is an extreme example of the bias toward offensive players: in the 22-card set there is only one defensive player, Alex Karras. Even he might not have been included if the 1968 Lions had had an offensive star. Another example, the 1970 Topps Super Glossy set, is somewhat less unbalanced: it contains 25 offensive players, 7 defensive players, and 1 kicker.

Numerous Hall of Fame defensive players were in the league for years before appearing on a card. The most egregious example I can think of is Dick Lane. In 1952, his rookie year with the Rams, Lane had 14 interceptions, an NFL record that still stands–and he did it in 12 games! In 1954 he again led the league in interceptions, with 10, this time with the Cardinals. Despite his performance–and though the Cardinals were hardly flush with stars–Lane first appeared on a 1957 Topps card, and his next appearance was on a 1961 Fleer. (Lane’s biography on Wikipedia–assuming it is accurate–is fascinating. It says his mother found him in a Dumpster!)

Another Hall of Fame defensive player, Len Ford, played for 11 years but appeared on only two cards: his 1955 Bowman rookie card and a 1957 Topps card. He began his career in 1948 with the Los Angeles Dons of the AAFC, and he joined the Browns in 1950 when the AAFC folded and the Browns joined the NFL. No major company printed cards of AAFC players, but Bowman printed cards of NFL players every year from 1950 to 1955, and they finally included Ford in their last year.

At least four Lombardi-era Packers defensive players also made late rookie card appearances: Ray Nitschke began his career in 1958, and his rookie card is a 1963 Topps. Willie Davis also joined the team in 1958, and his rookie card is a 1964 Philadelphia. Herb Adderley joined the team in 1961, and his rookie card is also a 1964 Philadelphia–with his name misspelled, to boot. Willie Wood started in 1960, and his rookie card is a 1963 Topps.

Two Chiefs Hall of Fame defensive backs provide a final example: Willie Lanier joined the Chiefs in 1967, and his rookie card is a 1971 Topps. Emmitt Thomas joined in 1966, and his rookie card is a 1972 Topps.

Occasionally, when it took a while for a defensive player to appear on a card from a major company, the player would appear first on a “pre-rookie” card in a regional or oddball set. All four of the Packers mentioned above had pre-rookie cards in the 1961 Lake to Lake Packers set. Hall of Famers Bob Lilly, Jim Johnson, and Larry Wilson all had pre-rookie cards in the 1962 Post Cereal set. And as I wrote in a previous post, Rams star Ed Meador appeared on 1959 Bell Brand, 1960 Bell Brand, and 1962 Post Cereal cards before his 1963 Topps rookie card was issued. Another long-time Ram, Jack Pardee, whose rookie card is a 1964 Philadelphia, also appeared in the Bell Brand and Post Cereal sets.

Changing the subject a bit, it is worth noting that until 1959, football cards did not distinguish between offensive and defensive positions when there was ambiguity. For example, if a player’s card said “end,” he could have been either a receiver or a defensive end. If it said “back,” he could have been either a running back or a defensive back. Pictured here is an example: Jack Butler was a defensive back, but his 1957 Topps rookie card just says “back.” (This, by the way, is another late rookie card. Butler started his career with the Steelers in 1951.) Perhaps this was a vestige of the time when players played both offense and defense, and a back on offense would also have been a back on defense. Whatever the reason, because of the ambiguity, I probably still have some defensive players listed as offensive players in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. Occasionally a kind person sends me a correction.

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