Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

If you have been following this blog, you know that I recently added several sets of CFL football cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. While adding the CFL cards, I encountered a few players who also appeared on cards for teams in both the NFL and AFL. To spotlight those players, I created a new Gallery page called Cards in Three Leagues.

One of the three-league players, Tobin Rote, is pictured here on his 1961 Topps CFL card. To see the others, check out my new page. And, in case you haven’t seen them, check out the Gallery’s other fun pages, too!

Yesterday I added 1959 Topps CFL cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. As you can see, they look very much like 1959 Topps NFL cards. Fans of the American Football League will find a number of familiar players in the set. Two of them are pictured here: Ernie Warlick, who played from 1962 to 1965 for the Buffalo Bills, and Sam DeLuca, who played from 1960 to 1966 for the Chargers and Jets. I identified several others in the set description.

This week I added 1960 Topps CFL cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. One of them, Tom “Corky” Tharp, is pictured here. Tharp, who skipped to the AFL’s New York Titans in 1960, also appeared on a 1960 Fleer AFL card. He is the only player I can think of who appeared on cards for two different leagues in the same season. (Thanks to Pastor Scott for that bit of trivia.)

This is the fourth CFL set I have added to the gallery in the past month. You can see the other CFL sets, recent and not, on my Canadian football card page.

Yesterday I finished adding 1961 Topps CFL cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. Two of them are pictured here: Jim G. Taylor, whose picture Topps had mistakenly on Jim C. Taylor’s 1959 Topps and 1960 Topps cards; and Cookie Gilchrist, who later starred for the Buffalo Bills, Denver Broncos, and Miami Dolphins. Gilchrist is one of several players in the 1961 Topps CFL set who went on to play in the AFL or NFL.

You can see all of the CFL sets I have so far on my page of Canadian football cards.

This week I added 1964 Topps CFL cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. There are 88 cards in the set: nine or ten cards for each of the CFL teams, plus two nearly identical checklists. The card pictured here is Sherman Lewis, who placed third in Heisman voting in 1963 (see my page of Heisman candidates), played in the CFL in 1964 and 1965, played for the New York Jets in 1966 and 1967, and went on to a long coaching career in college and the NFL. Sherman was an assistant coach with four Super Bowl championship teams: three with San Francisco and one with Green Bay.

I filed the 1964 set under–what else?–Canadian football cards. Watch for four more CFL sets in the next few weeks.

Last week, when I added 1971 O-Pee-Chee CFL cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery, I discovered that three of the players in the set had played in exactly one NFL game before going to the CFL. So I added the three players–Greg Barton, Don Jonas, and Benjy Dial–to my Cups of Coffee page. If you haven’t seen it, have a look!

This week I added 1971 O-Pee-Chee CFL football cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. One thing I enjoyed about adding the cards was finding a few players who had also played in the NFL or AFL, but who did not appear on NFL or AFL cards. One of them, Dave Raimey, is pictured here. Raimey played for the Cleveland Browns in 1964, then he played ten seasons in the CFL and made the Canadian Football Hall of Fame.

In the notes for the 1971 O-Pee-Chee cards, I identified all of the players who also played in the NFL or AFL. I also marked the players who are members of the Canadian Hall of Fame. Check ’em out!

Dave “Super” Mann, who played three seasons for the NFL’s Chicago Cardinals and twelve seasons for the CFL’s Toronto Argonauts, passed away on May 22. At various times in his career, Mann was a running back, defensive back, receiver, punter, kicker, and kick returner. In 1958, he and Boyd Carter combined to return a missed field goal 131 yards, still a CFL record. Mann also had the third-longest punt in CFL history, a 102-yarder. The Toronto Star web site has a summary of Mann’s career.

Mann appeared on two NFL football cards and numerous CFL cards. His rookie card, a 1956 Topps, is pictured here. I don’t yet have all of his CFL cards, but you can see his 1962 and 1963 Topps CFL cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

Sam DeLuca, an offensive lineman from 1960 to 1966 for the Los Angeles/San Diego Chargers and New York Jets, passed away on September 13. NYDailyNews.com has a report. DeLuca also spent two seasons, 1957 and 1958, with the CFL’s Toronto Argonauts. After his playing career, DeLuca was a radio broadcaster for New York Jets games; you can see his profile at musicradio77.com.

The card pictured here is DeLuca’s first AFL card, a 1960 Fleer. The image shows DeLuca in his University of South Carolina uniform; there is a similar image on the USC Athletic Hall of Fame web site. DeLuca also appeared on a 1959 Topps CFL card (though he did not play that year) and on several cards while in the AFL.

You can see all of DeLuca’s AFL football cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery. I don’t yet have CFL cards in the Gallery, but there are usually copies of his 1959 Topps CFL card on eBay.

Here is the answer to a trivia question that Pastor Scott asked a few weeks ago. The question was “What player appeared on two different cards in one year for two different teams and two different leagues? Both cards were major card companies.” Scott had to tell me: it’s Corky Tharp.

Pictured here is Tharp’s 1960 Topps CFL card. He played for the Toronto Argonauts in 1955 and from 1957 to 1959, and Topps evidently expected him to stay with the team in 1960. He didn’t, though. He instead joined the New York Titans (later the Jets) of the new American Football League, and he appeared on a 1960 Fleer AFL card, as well. He spent one season with the Titans, playing nine games at defensive back.

While the fronts of 1960 Topps CFL cards are much different than their NFL counterparts, the backs of the cards in the two sets are alike. The only difference is that the text on the CFL cards is repeated in French. Even the text in the cartoon, which you can faintly see on this card, appears in both French and English. You can also see that repeating the text didn’t leave much room for detail.

I really like the fronts of the cards, with the colored portraits over the black and white action photos. Topps had used black and white photos for backgrounds in their classic 1955 Topps All-American set, and they would use them again as insets on their 1962 NFL cards. In 1962 they matched the inset photos with the players on the cards–or most of them, anyway–but they did not do that on the 1960 CFL cards. The photos on the CFL cards appear to be random, and Topps used each photo on multiple cards.

There are 88 cards in the 1960 CFL set, and for vintage AFL and NFL card collectors, it includes a few familiar names. Veryl Switzer, Ken Carpenter, and Tobin Rote had played in the NFL in the 50s, and Rote went on to play for the Chargers and Broncos in the 60s. Randy Duncan, Ernie Warlick, and Gerry McDougall also joined AFL teams in the 60s. And Joe Kapp and Sam Etcheverry later quarterbacked in the NFL.