(Mis)Adventures in Vintage Football Cards

 I've slowly been accumulating vintage football cards over the past couple of years and had been enjoying them, so I recently purchased a few lots on eBay to kick off a collection. I figured that collecting vintage baseball would be so much fun, I'd do the same for football. I quickly ran into two major snags, though, which have made me question whether this was a good idea.

A few weeks ago I decided to take advantage of one of those "5% eBay bucks" weekday deals to pick up a few decent-sized lots of '60s and '70s football cards. I bought five lots. I paid for five lots. And I am only going to receive three lots. Turns out that packages that the USPS supposedly delivered to my address on December 22 went somewhere else instead, probably a neighbor. (The USPS has told me three different addresses where they were supposedly delivered). Right now some neighbor of mine is enjoying free vintage football cards (and my son's Lego baseplates, though those were an Amazon purchase and Amazon replaced them without a problem). I was worried about blogger packages, especially the bingo winnings, but I believe everything is accounted for there. All I've been able to get from the post office is a handwritten note scrawled on a Google Maps printout with where they think they sent the packages. I doubt eBay or my credit card company is going to accept that, but I'm losing hope I'll be able to get anything more official from them. All in all it's only $30 lost and about 150 cards - a lot of '70s NY Giants and a '60s/'70s lot that included a '70 Gale Sayers and a '60 Forrest Gregg, among others. Pisses me off though, maybe more than it should. This whole thing has made me more leery about the USPS and eBay, fairly or not. As it happened right as I was kicking off this football card collection it has cast a pall over that as well. I'm actually wondering if writing about it here will prove cathartic; we'll see . . .

The other issue is a bit more insidious. When I first jumped into vintage baseball, I immediately fell in love with vintage baseball cards. When I got my first lot of football cards, I felt more disappointment than anything else. A large number of those cards were '69s. Take a look:

Tightly cropped shots of the head and jersey, no backgrounds, almost every pose the same. They're kind of . . . blah. Still a few big names though - a vintage card of the Hon. Alan Page is awesome, but the Jim Otto card is the only one that is really all that interesting here.

Here's a documentation of what I've picked up from each year - not every card, but focusing more on the stars and the most interesting cards I've now accumulated from each vintage set.

Going back one year to '69 - some solid names here. I hate the solid backgrounds though.

Did you notice on the first two cards above that Topps used the Kansas City logo on Washington's Sonny Jurgensen's card? One nice thing about this design is that it showcases the '60s NFL logos, many of which are very different from those used today.

1971 - I'd seen the Merlin Olsen on a few blogs and loved it. Seeing it in a very affordable lot was what triggered all this madness in the first place. The Garo Yepremian is another blogger favorite I'm happy to own.

Some of the bigger names in my '71s.

There was finally some personality and life in the '71s. A few interesting photos, too.

Not as many in the '72 base cards. There were my favorite of the bunch.

The Pro Action subset cards are fantastic, however,  much better than the "In Action" baseball cards from the same year.

'72 is as good place as any to mention the hair. Baseball collectors go crazy for the '76 Oscar Gamble, but Afros like his seemed to be quite commonplace in the NFL throughout the entire 1970s. I don't know if it was a cultural difference or what, but what was unusual on a baseball card was quite normal in football.

Moving on to '73 and some of the bigger names. Couple of really good QBs.

The varieties in poses, backgrounds and hair were all improving in '73.

There were a lot more '74s than anything else in these lots, and I'm quite glad for it - it seems to be the most interesting set in the decade based on the photos. (Oddly I didn't pick up a single '77 - judging from Night Owl's recent documentation of that set, it could be quite similar). Here are some famous and infamous names in that set.

Here is some of the best hair in the set. Lots and lots of big hair, plus a surprising amount of young men who were bald and proud.

The kickers in the set deserve their own photo.

As do the punters. Quite a variety of expressions among football's forgotten men. And how about Dolphins punter Larry Seiple throwing a stiff-arm! (This was in the latter day of football generalists; Seiple played a few other positions as well). Note his severe 50s-60s crew cut. We'll check in on him again in a couple of sets.

Another thing I love about '74 is the variety of interesting backgrounds. Atlanta and Washington in particular have a lot of interesting ones.

But it was these Jets that I was most happy about. (Jets, Bo? But you're a Giants fan!) Baseball fans go gaga over a "parking lot card", but there are lots of them in '70s Topps football, especially '74, which used so many great training camp backgrounds. In the case of the Jets, they trained at Hofstra University, where many years later I went to college. So these are parking lot cards of parking lots that I used to park in all the time!

'75s are fun but lack some of the character of the '74 set.

After picking out the most interesting cards from my lot, one theme stood out - hydration. That Spider Lockhart card is fantastic. Longest straw on a sports card?

Not too much star power in my '76s, except for the Championship Game cards.

It's a good time to check in on that '70s hair, though. Larry Seiple finally mellowed out and let his hair grow out. I looked him up - he's bald now.

Skipping to '78, my biggest names are of the special teams variety. Yeah, the best player on the Giants those days was their punter.

These were the most interesting photos. Already starting to look like a typical '80s set.

A few '79s, I didn't get many. The most interesting were Joe Theismann, Carl Eller, and Roger Carr's hat. That design is almost a straight-up copy of '73.

I got a few oddballs too, like these '74 Wonder Bread cards. They used the '71 Topps design minus the cartoon football player.

I also got about half of the team stamp albums from 1969.

Most were all or partially completed. At least I didn't get completely shut out on Sayers!

I also have some loose ones where the guy didn't have the book. I don't know if I'm interested in picking up more books to paste them in.

One of the lots had modern cards as well. There were a whole lot of '89s - here are some of the biggest names.

1991 Pro Set is a highly-overproduced junkwax set, but I love the cards of the Super Bowl XXV Giants, especially that Mark Ingram card.

There was even an unopened pack of '92 Score. I got this lot a few weeks ago and didn't even bother to open it until now.

Interesting - I don't think I'd ever seen this set before. The set is very 90s-looking and the design has more color and personality than Score's baseball sets. Not really any big names here though.

Hey, that's not football! There were a few rogue cards of other sports that made their way into these sets. The one baseball card was a '73 high number that I needed! The basketball and hockey are available for trade. I'll also have plenty of '70s football dupes I'd be happy to trade for baseball or more football, so if you have needs, particularly for '74, do let me know!