1986 Topps Football What's not to love?

When I take deep dives into sets I think about chasing I have a couple of go-to places for info and opinion. One of them is Sports Collectors Daily. They usually have posted a time or two about any set and you can rely on them to give you the pluses and minuses concisely. What cards go for a premium and why etc.

I think they missed the mark on this one. I love this set. The 'football field' effect of the borders is terrific. SCD had this to say: "Putting it bluntly, the cards aren’t all that beautiful. With the green borders and diagonal yard marker lines, it’s easy to see that Topps was duplicating a football field. The end result, though, just wasn’t all that easy to look at. In addition, the color borders also display the slightest flaws, making them more noticeable."

OK, so beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but in this case, I'm f'ing right and anyone who sez different is wrong. 😉😉😉 I mean look at these things. This Eric Dickerson card is fantastic.

And Jerry Rice (shown up top) got a classic rookie card.

I like the way Topps numbered this thing. It's by team with the Super Bowl champion Bears first. And each team is (with a couple of minor exceptions) put in position order...team card first, then quarterback, running backs, wideouts, tight ends, kickers and so on through the defensive guys beginning with linemen and ending with the punter.

Teams vary in a couple of ways. Some have a pair of quarterbacks and the number of players at other positions changes from one team to the next. When I bindered it a few months back I recall that there was at least one player who was put between players of a different position, a kicker was mixed in with the linemen I believe. Rather than being an error, I'd guess that came about due to Topps finding they had no useable photo for someone who had been penciled in, or possibly they couldn't get the player to sign or return their release.

I need to do some homework there. And some teams lacked a kicker and/or punter.

I'll just post a few of the cards that I like, either for the player or the card itself. The Payton card shows how All Pros were designated.

Mike Singletary was a beast. He played at Houston Worthing and the stories that circulated among high school coaches back then made it seem like he was Superman.

I used to go to a dentist who also had Billy Sims as a patient. He told me that Sims terribly afraid of getting dental work and once braced himself so hard in the chair that he broke the footrest.

Tommy Kramer, my first fantasy football stud. And one of the few guys I ever recall paying for a signature.

I wish the Broncos would go back to these colors/unis. The stuff they wear these days is crap.

When I hear the name 'Reggie White' I think of him looking like this. Unhappy and ready to take it out on a QB.

I guess it's worth mentioning that I did something different with this set. I bought it in one piece. I usually enjoy the chase almost as much as the cards but in this case, I wanted a consistent, high-quality set, and buying this one piecemeal seemed less than ideal. And I was very happy with the set when it arrived. Not a corner ding in the bunch. Looks super in the binder.

Joe Morris was a guy my father enjoyed watching play for his Giants. I've taken up the torch as a newly minted Giants fan, btw. But that's a story for another post.

The team cards had a Fleer-ish (is that a legit term?) quality to them. What I mean is that they remind me of the stuff Fleer put out when they had the NFL license but not one with NFLPA.

The one subset is Record Breakers and it kicks off the set. Eric Dickerson is the Warren Spahn of football cards...it's damn impossible to find a bad one of him.

One thing SCD mentioned has me in total agreement... the backs of these things are bad. Terrible color choice, barely readable text, space wasted with pointless artwork, stat box and number both angled and at different angles at that.

Just not good. They could have made the info/stat box horizontal, Put the NFLPA logo in the upper right, centered the player's name, and done the card number differently. But they didn't ask me.

Topps had an insert set in their '86 packs. They went with their 1,000 Yard Club cards as they did for several football sets in the 80s. I'm saving those for a future post. There is a cool Eric Dickerson card in that bunch that deserves the spotlight.

#9 Dream

Daniel, over on his It's Like Having My Own Card Shop blog, is having a contest to celebrate nine years of blogging. He has asked other bloggers to enter by concocting a nine card post, theme TBD. That sounded easy enough to complete and a post of cards I've scanned/blogged of players who wore the number 9 popped to mind. I haven't gone through the other entries so it's highly possible that this isn't the only such entry but so be it.

Anyway...here they are. (I wanted to hit the Big Four sports but a basketball entry eluded me. Outside of Bob Pettit (look him up, kids) I can't even think of a hoopster who wore that number much less find a scan of a card of one so I went with the other sports.) These are in no particular order other than this is how I came across them.

Roger Maris came to mind quickly and I was going to use the card from Topps' 1961 MVP subset but that scan was awful. I considered his 1959 card but he wore #3 with the Athletics so I went with my third choice. The 1960 All-Star cards have grown on me since I built the set.

In my mind the #9 in baseball means Ted Williams. His '58 All-Star card is likely the first career-era Teddy Ballgame card I owned as an adult collector.

Here is a Dexter Press postcard of my favorite #9 Orioles player, Don Buford. He was an underrated member of the great Orioles teams of 1969-71. These DP postcards (anything by Dexter Press actually) are things of beauty.

Reggie Jackson wore #9 in his brief Orioles stint. Here he is, my least favorite Oriole wearing their worst uni combo on a modern Topps card.

Moving on to football we find "Two Minute" Tommy Kramer, the pride of San Antonio, Texas. He was my first 'stud' fantasy football player.

Jim McMahon on a Pro Set wearing a Chargers uniform. This looks wrong.

I'm a huge fan of Philly Gum football cards. This is the 1967 Sonny Jurgensen.  If you don't know much about him you could do worse than spend some time checking out this NFL Films feature. He was a great one.

And now on to hockey for a pair of cards.

Adam Graves has his #9 in the Madison Square Garden rafters. We are currently working on plans for a fall trip to the East Coast and at least one Rangers game in on the agenda. I can't wait.

And finally Mr. Hockey. Nowadays you can't read a sports-related article in print or online without some clown throwing the 'G.O.A.T.' label on somebody. Just know this.....if someone uses it in reference to Gordie they are correct.

So there are my nine cards, all of players who wore that number. Congrats to Daniel on his milestone. Nine years of blogging is something to celebrate for sure.

And what better way to wrap up this contest entry than with my favorite John Lennon song. The same song that inspired the title of this post.

Monday Morning Quarterback #44 Tommy Kramer 1984 Topps

In this ongoing series of posts I am going to feature cards from my fantasy football player collection, specifically the 117 quarterbacks I've had on my team's roster since 1980. I have one selected card for each player in my All-Time Flyers binder. Through the years I've tried to use as many different card varieties as possible while holding on to my preference which is: a card issued in a year I owned the player showing him in the proper team uni in a vertical format. Card availability and my whims have had a big impact on that standard. 

NFL Info: Tommy Kramer was a high school star in San Antonio and went on to play at a high level at Rice University in Houston before being drafted by the Vikings in 1977. He played for 11 seasons with the Vikes having two separate stints as their starter. He's a member of the College Football Hall of Fame. He also had a reputation as a guy who liked living life to the fullest, if you know what I mean.

Fantasy Impact: Tommy Kramer is one of my favorite players ever. I got a chance to meet him back in January of last year at a card show and had him sign a photo with a unique inscription. This post describes that day and what Kramer has mans to me in terms of fantasy football.

The Card: Topps' football designs of the era tend to all run together so when I say I like this one it's probably me allowing my Tommy Kramer fandom override my critical eye. Honestly the front is just sort of...there. It has the team logo so there's that.

The cardback is a bit hard to read with the green blocks and brown type on dark cardboard but all the usual elements are there: vitals, stats, blurb and cartoon. Overall if I was grading the Topps 1984 football set it would get a big fat solid "C".

My First Time

I did something on Saturday I don't think I've ever done before. I stood in line and paid money to get an autograph. I've been to lots of memorabilia shows that had lots of pretty impressive guest signers featured but I never felt the need to pay to have someone sign something. Way back when there were freebie signers to attract crowds, that was a different story.

But anyway this past weekend the TriStar show rolled though Houston and I attended as usual just to poke through bargain card bins and track down publications. But as I stood in line to buy my admission ticket I looked at the long list of guests and one name jumped out at me...... Tommy Kramer. He may be just a vaguely remembered name to some of you but for me he represents a fun time when we were just starting my fantasy football league (The Ed Hughes Football League) and Kramer was a strong-armed quarterback for the Vikings.

In 1980 at our first draft I took Dan Fouts but as my team floundered I went through a series of trades picking up Bert Jones of the Baltimore Colts and then Kramer. It was Kramer who led me to money winning weeks to end the season and who starred for me for the next few seasons.

I've had a 'soft spot' for him ever since. When someone had the bright idea of making a league Hall of Fame I, as 'Commish for Life', made sure that Kramer was a charter member. When I saw his name on the list of show guests I figured this was my one chance to say 'Hello' and get a signed picture. I bought an autograph ticket and the above 8x10 and I was all set. And since he was giving a free inscription with his signature I had a flash of inspiration and decided to ask him to add "E.H.F.L. Hall of Fame 1990" which he was gracious enough to do. I'm not real sure he understood my explanation but he never hesitated and he took his time to made sure he got it right.

It wouldn't have surprised me if he had the TriStar guy next to him throw me out but instead he posed for a picture, thanked me for coming and shook hands. I left feeling pretty good.

For those unfamiliar with Tommy Kramer he played for Rice University after a stellar high school career in San Antonio at Lee High School winning a state title and nearly winning a second one. He set and held all the passing records at Rice until they were eclipsed in the pass happy days of Chase Clement and he is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame.

I have the distinct feeling that compared to being in that prestigious place becoming a member of the Ed Hughes Football League Hall of Fame isn't quite as big a deal to Tommy Kramer.

 

OWNERS

Mark Kuhlmann

Todd Hogan

Steve Barenholtz

Mike 'Moose' Casella

PLAYERS

Dan Marino

Tommy Kramer

Dan Fouts

Jerry Rice

Emmitt Smith

Marcus Allen

Eric Dickerson

Mark Clayton & Mark Duper

John Elway

Marshall Faulk

Randy Moss

Chris Carter

Brett Favre

Terrell Owens

CONTRIBUTORS

Jim Nichols

Dean Tomes (of DAGraphix)

Lorraine Diaz-Andrews

Bob Andrews