For my money the Philadelphia Gum football sets of the mid 60s are among the best cards ever printed. Lots of collectors have described them as 'dull' but I don't agree at all. I have a sort of open ended goal to collect one of these sets some day. I'll likely wait until after I've got most of my Topps '59 baseball set blogged so I can concentrate on the Philly Gum set.
I never knew anything about the company. My friends and I had the strange idea that it was just a brand name used by Topps which was doing AFL cards back then. We came to believe this because of the 'fine print' copyright line on the back of the cards which to used seemed to be a near duplicate of the size and type font Topps used.
Wikipedia schooled me on the company:
The company was established in 1948 in Havertown, Pennsylvania, by Edward P. Fenimore (a longtime chewing gum expert who was with Bowman Gum). His son Edward L. Fenimore, served as president of the company and for a period, as the Chairman of the National Association of Chewing Gum Manufacturers. His sons, Edward P. II & Richard L., later joined him on the management team, making the company a third generation family owned and operated business. All products, many of which were sold under the Swell brand name, were manufactured in a 200,000-square-foot (19,000 m2) factory just west of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Anyway here are a few of my favorites, several of which I've posted previously. I have more of the '64 set than any of the others so that may be the one I end up chasing.
1966 Philly Gum Lenny Moore
1964 Philly Gum Del Shofner
This Shofner card is typical of many in that set as it used a shot taken with an empty grandstand behind him. My Dad loved the "New York Football Giants" as he called them. I listened to a lot of games of theirs broadcast by Marty Glickman and Al DeRogatis.
1964 Philly Gum John Mackey
1964 Philly Gum John Unitas
1964 Philly Gum Jim Martin
1964 Morrall & Scholtz
1965 Philly Gum John Unitas
1967 Philly Gum Sonny Jurgenson
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