1988 Swell Gum Football Greats (H-O-F)

I love oddball sets and I was happy to pick up this 1988 Swell Gum Football Greats set on Net54. As you might expect it features all the members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame as of the issue date.

The logo on the front is a bit hard to make out but it signifies that 1988 was the Hall's 25th Anniversary. There are 144 cards in the set. Here's that logo.

 

Swell Gum was a brand name under the Philly Gum umbrella and Philly Gum is lasted (it's very hard to see) on the back of the cards.

The checklist is quirky in that it starts off with the five 1985 Hall inductees. That group included Joe Willie Namath, O. J. Simpson, and Pete Rozelle. 1985 was three years prior to the set being issued. The newest inductee class (1988) is at the end. It's as if the set was put together in '85 with the newest members featured but not issured for three years. In between the '85 and '88 groups the rest of the Hall members are in alphabetical order..sort of. Some cards are 'out of place' in the alphabetical lineup...Dick Butkus and Willie Brown landed in behind the inductees with 'C' names and others are scrambled as well. 

The cards themselves have a decent design. The Hall logo takes up too much space but it doesn't deter from the cards much.

 

 

 

Nothing wrong with the Jim Brown card. It's better than some of the Topps and Philly Gum cards that were produced during his career.

I had to stop and think when I was sorting these and saw "John Johnson". I just didn't recognize the name or the face.

 

But when I flipped it over I saw it was John Henry Johnson.He was a powerful runner for the Steelers and a few other teams back in the day but I know I never once heard him referred to as simply John Johnson. Henry was always part of his name. That's how he's listed everywhere. 

This is as good as any a spot to show the back of the cards. The text is exactly the same as is posted on the member's Hall of Fame website page.

A few more of my favorite cards...

Then there is this....

The Jim Parker and Gino Marchetti cards are perfect examples of the wide gap in photo quality. I mean is that the best pic of Parker available? It appears to be a faded Polaroid Instamatic shot. OTOH, the Marchetti photo used is a classic.  

Some, like Lance Alworth's picture, fall somewhere in between.

 

 

I've mentioned a few times the letter I received unsolicited from 70s era Giants runningback Ron Johnson. It was something prompted by a meeting between Johnson and my Uncle Gerard. The same sort of thing happened with Hall inductee Alex Wojciechowicz. One day in the mid 1980s I got a large envelope in the mail which contained a Pro Football Hall of Fame wall calendar. It had been sent by Alex Wojciechowicz who had become a customer at my Uncle's pharmacy. In it Wojciechowicz had written a bit about his career and some notes on other Hall members he'd played with and against in the 40s. What I remember most about it is that every he signed his full name to every comment. I'm sure i have the calendar among the stuff I packed away when I gave up my hobby room whn we needed space for a second nursery.  I'll dig it out one of these days.

I'm a sucker for sideline cape pics so I'll finish with this one of Doug Atkins.

Swell followed up this set with sets in 1989 and 1990. If I can find them cheap enough I may grab those as well.

Gale Sayers (and the perils of social media)

Social media can be an awful place, but I didn't have to tell you that, did I? I have Facebook and Twitter accounts but sometimes you just have to walk away from them for a bit. At least I do. But there is some upside to them too, if you know how to filter the garbage.

For example a couple of months ago I saw posted a shot of the great Bears runningback, Gale Sayers. It reminded me that one of my hobby goals has been to pick up the Sayers rookie card out of the 1966 Philly Gum set. It's been a card I've wanted but wasn't going to overpay for. Nor was I going to buy a terrible copy just to say I had it. A couple of weeks after I started looking I found this one on eBay.

It's flawed but still very collectible. Any Philly Gum card you come across is likely to be flawed. That company had some real issues with quality control but there is no disputing the fact that their cards are classics.

Oddly my new scanner hated my copy and gave it what looks like a 'diamond cut' but in hand that's not the case. The fact that it's off center can't detract from the awesomeness of this thing. That's Soldier Field in the background, pre-renovation Soldier Field to be exact. 

As for Sayers...he's right up there among the most exciting players I've ever seen.. His career lasted essentially five seasons but when he was on the field he was the center of everyone's attention. He came out of college with a nickname that would truly define his career, the Kansas Comet. And like a comet he was brilliant and flashed past us all too quickly. 

The cardback has an obvious flaw, that burn-like mark but I'm just happy to have been able to find one in decent shape that didn't break my budget. While doing my searches I also came across a nice copy of the 1970 Sayers Topps Super. These are very affordable so I nabbed one as well.

Here is the back:

Topps slightly modified the back of their regular '70 Sayers card for the back of the Super. Here is the flagship Topps card's back.

And back to the 'side topic' at hand, social media. I went looking on YouTube for some Sayers highlights. The best one I could find was pretty impressive. But to my surprise (and consternation) it's set to some music that contains "N Bombs" which made me glad I wasn't doing the search while I was at work. So I found another one to include here. Well worth watching even with the less than superb quality ...and you can experience the Staples Singers to boot. Check out his run at about 1:50 against the Baltimore Colts. LOL at my team.

I mentioned how tough Philly Gum cards can be to find in good shape. Here's the perfect example. PSA graded this one as an 8 despite the ragged cuts you can see along the sides. Everything is relative.

EDIT, EDIT, EDIT!!!

Within a few hours of my posting this Jedi Jeff, author of  2x3 Heroes and a knowledgeable Chicago guy posted a comment to this entry asking me about the stadium background on the Sayers card. His contention is that the pic was likely not taken at Soldier Field as I stated but rather Kezar Stadium, them home of the SF 49ers. 

Now I had spent some time prior to posting doing some googling and felt pretty sure the the shot was from Soldier Field but Jeff had me doubting myself. I love old stadiums and poking around the 'net to find the origin of shots used in the Topps baseball sets I've blogged was always a treat. And sometimes I was challenged by a reader and found myself to be way off base. 

I decided to go down this rabbit hole and see where it took me. I based my statement on the scoreboard partially visible behind Sayers. To me it matched the old scoreboard at Soldier Field. The following are the best shots I could find.

 

I clipped the scoreboard from the racing pic and part of the card. It looked like this:

Looks pretty close. Note the 'legs' that hold up the scoreboard and the position of the flagpole. 

Here is a picture of Kezar Stadium from the 1950s:

It's hard to see but the scoreboard doesn't look the same. But that's not exactly a deal breaker. Scoreboards come and go. But look closer at the pic above. Note where the ramps are in the area around the far end of the stadium. Here is a closer cropped look:

 They are up near the very top of the stands. The ramps in Soldier Field were farther down, near the middle of the stands. 

And it's certainly wouldn't hold up as evidence in court but this really neat piece of artwork sure looks like a match for the scoreboard in the card.

BTW...this Soldier Field rendering is one of many done by artist Gary Chanko. He is featured semi-regularly on the UniWatch blog and there is a Flickr site with all his scoreboard art. Very much worth the click!

And finally there is one more fact to deal with. Jeff pointed out that the Bears didn't use Soldier Field as a permanent home in until later. The Bears' site itself claims their home to have been Wrigley Field until 1970. But that's not entirely true. While Jeff's link to Wikipedia has them spending the 1965 season at Wrigley the 1964 season was played at Soldier Field. 

So I'm going to stand by my original feeling that the 1966 Gale Sayers rookie uses a picture taken at Soldier Field. What say you jury of my peers?

Card Show Vintage Football

Well, football season is encroaching of baseball's summer spotlight and I know that bugs a lot of you. I'm OK with it though. I don't pay a lot of attention to the preseason football other than to gripe about having two meaningless games included with my Texans tickets...and paying the full regular season price for them.

But soon it'll be September and the baseball pennant races will be cranked up to 11, the NHL camps will be open and exhibitions underway and I'll be knee deep in the Texans season to say nothing of my Houston Cougars. It's my favorite time of the year.

In my more nostalgic moments I think about long ago Saturdays in the fall when I'd be supervising intramural football games. Then we'd all head for the Athletics office to watch pennant race baseball on TV when the shadows seemed always to be covering the mound in the late afternoon. Finally it was off to work the UH game versus Arkansas or Texas in the Astrodome. Wish I could be that carefree now.

These are some of the vintage football cards I snapped up at the last monthly card show I attended. They came out of the dollar bin but with my 'regular customer' discount I paid less than that per card. Back up at the top is a 1960 Topps Y.A. Tittle. I remember him as the quarterback of the Giants back when I'd listen to their games with my father.

Then there is Howard 'Hopalong' Cassady on his card from the same set. Cassady won the Heisman at Ohio State and played eight years in the NFL. Although he never had the impact in the pros that he did in college he was able to help the Lions win the league title in 1957. He had about a half dozen cards during his pro career but this is the only one that uses his nickname on the front.  BTW...the original Hopalong Cassidy was a fictional cowboy romanticized in pulp novels, movie shorts and on TV.

The last card is a Philly Gum Giants team card from the 1967 set. The '67 Giants added QB Fran Tarkington and in the process were able to rebound from a 12 loss season to a couple years of .500 football. And they were pretty entertaining with Scramblin' Fran at the helm.

For all the greatness of the Philly Gum sets of the mid-60s you can tell by reading the blurb on the back that they would have benefited by employing a better proofreader.

I have other stuff from the bargain bins at the show to post, including a few cards from a TV show I loved as a kid but haven't thought about in years.

Baltimore Colt Card History Pt. 4 The Philly Gum Sets

1964 Philly Gum #12 John Unitas

In 1964 the license to produce NFL cards went to the Philadelphia Gum Company while Topps moved on to AFL sets. Philly Gum put out NFL cards for four seasons ending in 1967. The '64 set featured large square photos on a simple design. Each team had it's own color combo for the text box below the player and the Colts got a striking red and white design. This set, as well as the three Philly Gum sets that followed, contains 198 cards. Printing them on sheets of 264 meant that there were 66 'double prints' each year.

1964 Philly Gum

This set, or at least the Colts in it, are a big reason for my taking on this project. I had about half the 12 Colts and wanted to pick up the rest of them. One thing led to another and my goals expanded to finding all the Philly Gum Colts and then to completing all the vintage Baltimore Colts subsets.

The Colts were photographed for this set at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. The lighting, the background, the richness of the colors and the color combo just make for a great team set. It's worth noting that while most of the teams have training camp/practice field backgrounds there are some interesting team sets here. The New York Giants were photographed at Yankee Stadium. Their cards look a lot like the Colts' cards.

The Browns are shown with a chain link fence behind them and behind that fence sits (or so legend has it) is the players' parking lot with Jim Brown's Cadillac featured in most of the shots. Great stuff.

It's impossible for me to pick a favorite among the Colts' cards but if I was asked to keep only one for my collection it would be the Unitas or one of these three I've posted. Gino Marchetti looks so 'Marchetti-ish' in this one. He's definitely the guy who refused to be carried to the locker room after he broke his leg in the '58 title game.

1964 Philly Gum #4 Gino Marchetti

1964 Philly Gum #5 Jim Martin

This is John Mackey's rookie card. Cardboard greatness.

1964 Philly Gum #3 John Mackey

Vertical blue and black backs were easy to read. As has been the case with football cards for years to this point skill guys get a stat box, linemen a blurb.

The listing of Pro Bowl and other honors is new. I'd like to see that on more cards. The cartoons relate to the player on the card and are in the form of a quiz question.

Each team also got a team card and a 'Play of the Year' card. Like all the team cards the Colts' card had a black and white team photo. At least the background is intact. The card has a different color scheme than the players' cards do but contains both the team helmet and logo. A team related paragraph and cartoon quiz question make up the back.

1964 Philly Gum #13 Baltimore Colts Team

The Play of the Year card shows Coach Don Shula as well as Memorial Stadium and has a play diagram linked to a specific game from the previous season. Interestingly the play diagrammed doesn't seem to be the same one described on the back. As a coach I always used the dotted line to indicate a pass in the air and this one shows Unitas hitting Jimmy Orr on an 'out route' rather than Jerry Hill in the flat.

1964 Philly Gum #14 Colts' Play of the Year/Don Shula card

1965 Philly Gum

Philly Gum had come up with a nice template with the inaugural '64 set and it never varied by a whole lot. Each of the four yearly sets had the same 'look and feel'. Again there were 198 cards in the set.

Year Two of Philadelphia Gum's license saw them break out the NFL shield logo for the front of the cards. It was the first time this has happened. Other than making the name box smaller to accomodate the league logo the cards stayed pretty much the same. There were twelve Colts in the set plus the same two 'extra cards', the team card and the 'Play of the Year' card.

Most of the players got posed shots showing them from the waist or numbers up. Tony Lorick's full action pose is an exception. The Colts were given light blue text for the player names and white for team and position. The other teams each had their own combination.

1965 Philly Gum #2 Ray Berry

1965 Philly Gum #12 John Unitas

1965 Philly Gum #10 Jim Parker

1965 Philly Gum #6 Tony Lorick

1965 Philly Gum #4 Wendell Harris

The backs went to a reddish color and the 'coin rub' cartoon returned. The layout remained about the same as the '64 set. Again any honors from the previous season are listed for the players.

Again the team card comes in with a color not associated with any other Colts' card. 

1965 Philly Gum #1 Colts Team

Other than the colors the Play of the Year idea returned unchanged. At least this time the diagram matches the action that's described on the back.

1965 Philly Gum #14 Colts' Play of the Year/Don Shula card

1966 Philly Gum

1966 Philly Gum #24 John Unitas

Philly Gum football returned in 1966 with a few changes but nothing that would make you wonder who produced them. The name-team-position box moved to the top of the card but similar posed portrait cards dominated, at least among the Colts' cards. Each team got it's own colors with light blue again on the Colts' cards.

The addition of the expansion Atlanta Falcons meant that the other teams would get one less card each. There are now 11 Colts players represented plus the two related team cards. There were six members of the College or Pro Football Halls of Fame among the 11 Colts.

1966 Philly Gum #20 Lou Michaels

1966 Philly Gum #25 Bob Vogel

1966 Philly Gum #15 Ray Berry

As seen with Ray Berry and Lou Michaels above and Jimmy Orr below the iconic Colts helmet is present in this set more than any previous one.

Single bar face mask alert!

1966 Philly Gum #22 Jimmy Orr

The backs of the cards have been re-arranged for '66. The alignment is now horizontal and printed in green. The left side has player vitals and a bio paragraph, the right side has a 'Guess Who Quiz'. There is a small black and white photo of a different player or coach and the idea is to guess his identity. You are directed to a different card to find the answer. Previous seasons honors were included in the section with vital stats although neither card I scanned had any. The stats box for 'skill position' players is gone, each player gets a text paragraph. This will hold true for 1967 as well.

Well, look here. The coloring of the team card matches the players' cards. That's new.

1966 Philly Gum #14 Colts Team 

The old 'play of the year' format evolved into a clean picture of a play that is documented on the reverse. I love this shot of Lenny Moore and Jim Parker doing their thing. Merlin Olsen in pursuit makes it three Hall of Famers in the shot. I'm not sure but the Ram player on the ground between Moore and Parker may very well be Deacon Jones. That would make it four Hall guys.

1966 Philly Gum #26 Colts Play of the Year

The back of the play card has an illustrated officials' signals explanation rather than another 'guess the player' picture.. 

I'm going to break my own rule here and stick a non-Colt card into the mix. But only because it's one of the best football cards, ever. This is the Gale Sayers rookie card from this '66 Philly Gum set. It's not my scan. Oh how I wish I had this one to scan. Maybe some day.

1967 Philly Gum

1967 Philly Gum #16 Ordell Braase

The fourth and final Philly Gum NFL set retains the basic elements of the previous three but adds a slight twist... yellow borders. I'm sure someone at the company thought this was a good idea. They borders don't look bad when combined with the colors of some of the teams but when a team was assigned a name block like the pink one of the Cowboys or the purple of the Vikings it made for a bad look.

Another new club, the Saints, caused the team player totals to be reduced to ten per team plus the usual two extra cards per club. The Colts again had blue name/team/position blocks. I find the thin, sans-serif type to be 'cheap' looking somehow. I can't put my finger on it but it just doesn't look right. At least the size of it allowed them to use 'Johnny' as Unitas' first name this time.

Some of the photos look to have been taken in the same photo shoot as those that appeared in the previous year. Others look like Memorial Stadium shots from the '64 set. The Unitas card appears to be taken right after the '66 card. It's as if they said "OK, Mr. Unitas, hold that pose....let us put your helmet on you and try not to move".

It's worth noting that this set marks the first contributions to this project from fellow bloggers. Mark Hoyle and Joe Shlabotnik very both very generous in sending me Colts from many different sets from the late 60s right up through the Topps 1983 set. That's the final year of the Baltimore Colts franchise.

1967 Philly Gum #23 Johnny Unitas

1967 Philly Gum #14 Ray Berry (Error)

This 'Ray Berry" (above) card actually pictures cornerback Bobby Boyd who is also shown on his own card (below) which uses what is likely a shot taken for the '64 set.

1967 Philly Gum #15 Bob Boyd

1967 Philly Gum #19 Lenny Lyles (from Mark Hoyle)

The backs are done in brown with the pertinent player info on the right and a 'coin rub' quiz question pertaining to the player on the left. The questions actually like they were written by hand. Pro Bowl and other awards are listed again. 

The team card matches colors with the players' cards.

The 'officials' signals' feature previously included on the now defunct 'play of the year card' has moved to the team card.

A team logo card has been substituted for the 'play of the year' card. I have lots of love for the Leapin' Colt! I wish the current version of the team, the one that plays in another city, wouldn't use it. To mean it means BALTIMORE COLTS. But that's a whole other story.

The back has a nice summary of the Colts franchise up to that time. Note the reference to Johnny Unitas as "Mr. Quarterback". Indeed.

Semi Off Topic:
I actually love the New York Giants' cards in this set an awful lot. There are about six of them that are taken in Yankee Stadium featuring players with helmets on. They remind me of listening to Giants games with my father (he was a huge fan of them) with Marty Glickmann at the mike. The cards are awesome.

A bit of detective work has shown me that these '67 Giants cards were not necessarily 'outtakes' from the '64 photos. Allen Jacobs wasn't in the NFL until 1965 and he was a Packer that season. He came over to the Giants in 1966 so that likely when the shot was made.  

So that wraps up the four Philadelphia Gum seasons of NFL production as seen through the Baltimore Colts' cards. The sets are all very similar but each has aspects to make it stand out. As noted I'm partial to the 1964 set but collecting any of the four would be a blast.

Topps was back in the NFL card business in 1968. The Colts and the rest of the NFL teams joined the AFL clubs in Topps colorful 1968 set. That one is up next!