Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

I pick up bits of trivia here and there, and I thought I’d pass them on via a quiz. The questions will be about the players, not the football cards, so you don’t have to be a card collector to answer them. (You can probably find some of the answers on cards, though.)

So here we go, Question #1: What do the five players pictured here have in common? Scroll down slowly; the answer is after the strategically placed sponsored links.

For more information on a card, click on it or hold your cursor over it.

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Answer: They share the record for the most touchdown passes in a game, with 7. Nope, no Dan Marino, Brett Favre, Tom Brady, or Peyton Manning! Source: NFL Passing Records page of nfl.com.

• Sid Luckman, Chi. Bears vs. N.Y. Giants, Nov. 14, 1943
• Adrian Burk, Philadelphia vs. Washington, Oct. 17, 1954
• George Blanda, Houston vs. N.Y. Titans, Nov. 19, 1961
• Y.A. Tittle, N.Y. Giants vs. Washington, Oct. 28, 1962
• Joe Kapp, Minnesota vs. Baltimore, Sept. 28, 1969

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A couple of months ago I wrote about the white footballs you sometimes see on old Bowman cards. Naturally, after writing that post, I started noticing more and more white footballs. Here are a few that I came across while adding 1950’s cards to my sales site the last couple of days: 1953 Bowman Emlen Tunnell, 1954 Bowman Emlen Tunnell (apparently from the same photo session as 1953), 1955 Bowman Tom Fears, 1956 Topps Adrian Burk, and 1957 Lenny Moore.

The 1954 Tunnell card is the corrected version, with two L’s in his last name. The second L looks as if it’s been penciled in: it’s a bit fainter and wider than the first L, and the spacing isn’t quite right. I don’t know anything about printing, but it looks like someone improvised to fix the spelling error.

It appears that Adrian Burk was another jumping quarterback, or at least he’s up on his tip-toes.