Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

Today I identified the members of the New Orleans Saints Hall of Fame in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. Pictured here are cards of the first two members, Archie Manning and Dan Abramowicz, who both were inducted in 1988. Manning is on his 1972 Topps rookie card, and Abramowicz is on his 1969 Topps rookie card.

While researching Saints Hall of Fame players, I found something interesting: according to several web sites, including the Pro Football Hall of Fame site, the Saints have retired Jim Taylor’s number, 31. Taylor played only one season for the Saints, however, and he is not a member of their Hall of Fame. The team also retired Doug Atkins’s number, though Atkins was a Saint for only three seasons. It appears that someone in charge was in a hurry to retire numbers. (Taylor is shown here on a 1968 Topps card, though he retired before the 1968 season. Atkins is shown here on his 1969 Topps card.)

You can see the full list of Saints Hall of Famers on the team’s web site.

Since I deal only with vintage football cards, I don’t have cards of any of the players in today’s Super Bowl. I couldn’t even tell you what football cards were produced for the 2009 season. I didn’t want to be left out of the fun, though, so I dug up a card of Peyton Manning’s dad, Archie. Archie, of course, also has ties to the Saints: he was their quarterback from 1971 to 1982.

Archie’s rookie card is in the 1972 Topps set, and you can see more of his early cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. The card pictured here is a bit less common: it’s a 1979 Coke Saints card, one of a 45-card set. I don’t know what the roster size was in 1979, but 45 cards would have included nearly every player on the team. I can’t think of another set with so many players from a single team.

The Saints were so-so in 1979, and Archie is the biggest name in the Coke set. I haven’t added the set to my gallery yet–I’m still working on 1975–but there is a full list of the cards on the PSA site. Most individual 1979 Coke cards sell for a dollar or two on eBay.

According to Wikipedia, 0 and 00 are no longer legal uniform numbers in the NFL. That means that the players who wore them effectively have had their numbers retired. Pictured here are cards of five players who wore number 0 or 00: a 1963 Fleer Jim Otto, a 1972 Topps Ken Burrough, a 1961 Fleer Wallet Picture of John Olszewski, a 1968 Topps Obert Logan, and a 1948 Bowman John Clement.

I learned from the Wikipedia article that Jim Otto wore 00 because you could pronounce it like his name: aught-oh. Otto wore number 50 in his first season, 1960, and he switched to 00 for the remainder of his career. Otto’s 1964 Topps card shows a four-year-old image of him wearing number 50.

John Olszewski and Obert Logan also wore numbers other than 0 early in their careers. Olszewski’s cards with the Chicago Cardinals picture him in numbers 33 and 36. Logan’s 1967 Philadelphia card shows him in number 25 for the Cowboys.