Baltimore Colt Card History Pt. 3 The Early 60s.

1960 Topps #5 Jim Parker

After the two colorful and innovative sets Topps produced in '58 and '59 they took a step back in 1960, at least in my eyes. 

1960 Topps

On the plus side Topps had better photographs in the '60 set than the ones they used previously. Mostly posed portraits and 'action' shots with training camp backgrounds. But the set is otherwise pretty nondescript. The player names, team and position on a color football. The colors are random through the set with the Colts getting mostly red with a couple of orange and a yellow. Other teams had blue and green mixed in. To me the design isn't 'clean' enough to be clean (and I do like plain, simple designs) nor is it 'fancy' enough to be 'fancy'. If that makes any sense. It's just sort of 'there'. 

The Colts got the first 10 cards in the 132 card set with #11 being their team card. The Colts' team card has the second series checklist on the reverse.

1960 Topps #4 Ray Berry

The Johnny Unitas card always draws comments because of his 'spaced out' expression. My 'Colts Project' copy is far from pristine but it fills the spot. I have a nicer copy in my Unitas PC. 

1960 Topps #1 Johnny Unitas

1960 Topps #6 George Preas

I wish Topps had used the actual background for the team cards. I don't understand the point of doing otherwise. They have used natural backgrounds on previous team cards so why do this in a set where player cards show trees, grass and sky? It was one of my complaints with the 1959 baseball set as well. At least the leaping colt makes an appearance.

1960 Topps #11 Colts Team w/2nd Series checklist back

Green card backs are new. The usual vitals appear at the top with either year/career numbers or a bio blurb below that. 'Football Funnies", at least the ones I can read on the cards I have, are not particularly football related outside of kids wearing helmets in 'Bazooka joke style' comic panels.

Here is the above comic panel shown in a larger scan.

1960 Topps Metallic Sticker

Topps had these 'metallic stickers' as inserts in 1960. The above image is actually the one I purchased from COMC and and am awaiting delivery on. The fact that I'm now close enough to finishing off my wantlist of vintage Colts regular cards that I can chase inserts is a good sign I guess.

In '60 Fleer had jumped into the football card game with a set featuring players from the brand new AFL. In 1961 they expanded their football offering and included NFL cards. Topps added AFL players to their set as well in '61 so while this was the 2nd year of competition for kids' nickels between the two companies it was the first (and only) year that saw them both going 'all out' with players from both leagues.

1961 Topps

Topps' set in 1961 isn't much of an improvement over 1960 and may very well be a step backwards. The eight Colts included are shown with portrait photos for the most part. These are cut and pasted on solid color backgrounds of orange, red or yellow. Green and blue backgrounds show up with other teams. There are no team logos on either the front or back. The Fleer set used the teams' logos so I'm not sure if there was a licensing issue this year. Anyone?

1961 Topps #6 Jim Parker 

1961 Topps #4 Ray Berry

1961 Topps #9 Colts Team

Blue backs are new but the standard elements remain. Vitals, a bio paragraph or stat box and a 'coin rub' cartoon are set horizontally for the player cards.

The team card, horizontal on the front gets a vertical back.

Scattered throughout the set are '1960 Football Highlights' cards. The Colts are shown on this one commemorating Johnny U's 25 TD passes. His numbers were impressive at the time but in the current NFL they would be mundane. Times have changed.

1961 Topps #57 Highlights Johnny Unitas

The tattoos that Topps issued in the early 60s as inserts are generally out-of-sight pricewise, particularly the Unitas which is considered a 'test issue'. But this sticker, which I just purchased minus the tab (you can see the perforation markings on the left), was very cheap.

                                              1961 Topps 'flocked' sticker

Meanwhile, across the tracks, Fleer was producing what may be my favorite football set not issued by Philly Gum.

1961 Fleer

The majority of the players in the Fleer set are shown in pregame stadium shots and many of the NFL players had their picture taken at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. That fact, I'll admit, has a bearing on my view of this set. But beyond that these are terrific cards. These are football players by God!

The cards feature great posed portraits, the team logo and clean white borders and text block. There are ten Colts in the set, seven of them are in the Pro or College Football Hall of Fame, or both.

1961 Fleer #36 Bill Pellington

1961 Fleer #39 Art Donovan

1961 Fleer #37 Gino Marchetti

The backs don't quite match up to the fronts but the team logo makes another appearance at least. Each player gets a minimal info block and a fair sized paragraph write-up.

The light green doesn't do much to make the cards readable and on faded/browned cardboard like the Marchetti card below the white name and green titles all but disappear. Several of my cards in this set have similar back issues so I guess it's an issue with the cardboard used.

But despite the shortcomings on the reverse the fronts put the '61 Fleer far ahead of the Topps set. I've scanned four examples of the cards of the same player for comparisons sake. Take a look:

That Fleer Lenny Moore, with the view of the scoreboard along the right edge, is a Top Ten football card in my collection. And I'm more in love with that Fleer Artie Donovan card every time I see it. Those Fleer cards are just more 'alive'. It's too bad the company was relegated to 'AFL only' cards for the next two seasons before leaving the football cards business for a decade.

For the next two seasons Topps was again in the driver's seat as far as NFL cards were concerned. Luckily it appears that they were spurred on to better designs in 1962 and 1963. Oh, and Post cereal boxes featured NFL players in 1962. I've got some Colts to show off, too.

1962 Topps

For the first time since 1957 Topps went with a horizontal format for it's cards in '62. And the black border was downright revolutionary, at least in Topps sports cards. The cards, with a large full color shot and a smaller action one, are not unlike the 1960 Topps baseball cards. Name, team and position appear in a color box. The Colts had red and yellow boxes while other teams had these colors as well as blue and green.

1962 Topps #8 Gino Marchetti

1962 Topps #5 Raymond Berry

There were eleven Colts players plus a Colts team card in the 176 card set.

1962 Topps #12 Baltimore Colts Team 

1962 Topps #3 Alex "The Hawk" Hawkins

Vertical backs featured basic info, vitals, stats and/or a short bio and a cartoon that was tied into a football quiz question. The cartoon artwork seems more detailed and sophisticated than much of what has been seen up to now. I like it a lot.

Topps issued Football Bucks, miniature dollar bills with NFL players in 1962 as an insert into the packs of their football cards. There were four Colts in the 48 cards set. I need all four at this point, mostly because I haven't done a whole lot of insert chasing. They range from about $5 for Lenny Moore to $35 for Unitas.

1962 Post

Post Cereal boxes carried NFL cards that mirrored their baseball counterparts of the era. I have 11 of the 15 Colts. All are posed action shots with training camp backgrounds. Lots to love with these. You can find these in poorly trimmed condition (which I obviously have) and that holds down the cost. I'm fine with Post cards in this condition.

Topps had one more year of producing NFL cards before the licence went to Philadelphia Gum for four years.

1963 Topps

The 1963 football card set is colorful and fun. The 170 card set had eleven players for each team and a team card. The Colts cards are yellow and orange/brown. Johnny Unitas got card #1 for the fifth consecutive year. Oddly the team card (for all teams) didn't match the colors found on the players cards. The Unitas card is, as expected, the most expensive of the group. As is the case for the 1962 Unitas I lack a 1963 copy for this project but I have a mid-grade slabbed one for my Unitas PC.

Lots of grass, sky and trees are found behind the Colts players, five of whom are in the Hall of Fame. Taken individually these cards might not make you say "What a cool set!" but flipping through a few 9-pocket pages of these things will convince you it is.

1963 Topps #11 Bob Boyd

1963 Topps #9 Billy Ray Smith

1963 Topps #3 Ray Berry

1963 Topps #12 Baltimore Colts Team

'63 saw Topps change the color of the backs once again. The orange on white backs have the standard info and stats or a short bio. The cartoon is different though. Now it is in the form of a question pertaining to the player on the card and the answer is revealed by laying a small sheet of red cellophane over it. The cellophane came in every pack. I believe it is the first time the cellophane was used with a Topps product since the 1952 mostly non-sport Look 'N See set. Don't quote me on that though.

1963 will be the last Topps football set to contain NFL players until 1968. For the next four years the NFL license was held by the Philadelphia Gum Company and Topps took over the production of AFL cards. Fleer was the 'odd company out' and would be out of the football card business until the mid-1970s.

The Philly Gum sets will all be posted in the next of this series. The four editions range from good to terrific. Completing at least one of them is a 'back burner' project for me.

Hey, I'm posting baseball!!

I've been concentrating on football lately and hadn't picked up any new baseball items in awhile. That changed with a PWE from mark Hoyle yesterday. He saved me from having to dig into my closet for something baseball-ish to post by sending me some Orioles items and here are the highlights.

First up, Leaf-Donruss All Star Stand-ups, a Murray and a Ripken. These are 'tall boy' sized and amazingly they are an Orioles related 80's item I didn't have before. I didn't scan the back of the Ripken and it's not in front of me now but it's obviously from the set commemorating the 1986 All Star Game in the Astrodome. Cal went 0-4 in that game. From a previous post on that game:

I went with a friend of mine after I had entered a ticket lottery and was able to snag two seats in the right field pavilion. We spent the lead up to the game hanging out at the headquarters hotel, the Houston Hyatt Regency in downtown. We picked up some autographs, crashed a couple of dinners and talked to relief pitcher Don Aase of the Orioles. I had a premonition that he'd get the save and told him so. He laughed and shook my hand. Turns out I was right. He finished the game by getting a dp grounder out of Chris Brown of the Giants.

The Murray come from a season earlier and the AGS in the Metrodome. He went 0-3.

Oversized cards were a big deal in the 80s. Donruss produced a bunch of them including this '86 Murray. This is one of the better designs, too. Or maybe that's just my eye for Eddie Murray badass coolness talking.

Watching Murray play sure was fun. I miss those days. Thanks, Mark. Thanks for kick starting a baseball post in the middle of the dreary Houston January. Spring training isn't all that far away for all you baseball folks.

Monday Morning Quarterback #45 Brian Griese 2006 Topps Total

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: Brian Griese, son of Hall of Famer Bob Griese, was drafted in the third round by Denver in 1998 out of Michigan. He spent over a decade in the NFL, never a star but for the better part of a decade he was a very serviceable starter in several organizations. His most productive stretch was a four season run as #1 in Denver. During that time he made his only Pro Bowl appearance. With the exception of a 3-3 record in six starts with the Bears he had an above .500 record with each team he played for. After retirement he's worked as a Broncos radio voice and as a college analyst for ESPN.

Fantasy Impact: I had Griese twice as a back-up and bye week starter, in 2000 behind Kurt Warner and 2006 behind Brett Favre. He had two starts for me each season and did very well in three of them.

The Card: Another 'meh' Topps product design. Nothing special. In fact it is soooo 'nothing special' that I don't even care one way or another. I had a couple of Griese cards but I stuck this in the binder for variety.

Baltimore Colts Card History Pt. 2... the late 50's

1956 Topps #60 Lenny Moore

1956 saw Topps take over Bowman and this marks the first year of their football set.

1956 Topps

The first Topps effort strongly resembles the final Bowman one. The posed shots are set against a red/orange background. The 'colt over the crossbar' logo returns but it's more of a closeup than a full logo. It appears that each team's cards had a consistent color and it seems that it's a coincidence that the Colts had the same background color two years in a row. There are ten Colts cards in the 120 card set including the Colts team card and I've acquired all ten. This season saw the first team cards produced for football. The first checklists are also part of the '56 Topps set and at the prices I've seen I'm glad they are not on my wantlist.

1956 Topps #72 Jim Mutscheller 

1956 Topps #48 Baltimore Colts Team Card

The backs didn't change much from the previous season. They are again red and black but now contain vitals, a blurb, simple stat line and a cartoon.

The team card has a write-up and a listing of team record holders.

Lenny Moore's card is his rookie and it's the most expensive of the team set but it's not unreasonable in decent shape. Mine is way off-center and has a crease but it's mighty fine nonetheless. I love the classic pose he's striking on his card. The back is dominated by text as he obviously has no previous NFL stats.

1957 Topps

In 1957 Topps made a great leap away from the Bowman 'template' with a set of horizontal cards featuring two shots of each player, a portrait and a posed action photo. Each team had their own combination of colors. The Colts cards were all orange and green with the players names in a box done in either black or white on green. Player positions and the team nickname were black on white. No team logos were used. This was the first year that Topps issued cards in what we have come to know as the 'standard' size.

There are 13 Colts in the set and I have completed it. The cards are not terribly pricey except for the John Unitas and Ray Berry rookie cards. I've bought, sold and re-bought the Unitas rookie. I picked up a Berry card at the last card show I attended. It has a crease the length of the white strip between the two photos and wouldn't get much of a grade but in a binder page the crease isn't all that noticible and I knew I'd never find another copy for $20 in usable condition.

Billy Vessels whose picture is reused from the '56 set, was no longer active in 1957. He had been a Heisman winning college star at Oklahoma who played in Canada and served in the Army before his one NFL season.

1957 Topps #29 Billy Vessels

1957 Topps #17 Art Spinney

This Spinney card is faded to the point his background appears to be yellow, but the card is actually orange in better conditioned copies. Like the Marchetti card below my scanner did it no favors. They both look much better in hand than to do in these scans.

1957 Topps #5 Gino Marchetti

Topps didn't revise the backs as much as they did the fronts from prior years. The colors remained the same. In a layout that follows the front design there are sis-by-side sections with the left containing vitals, a paragraph blurb and, for skill players, stats. The right side has two cartoons.

Topps included checklist cards in the set but team cards took a year off. Following the breathrough 1957 set Topps issued football sets the next two years that foreshadowed the following spring's baseball issue.

1958 Topps

Real photo backgrounds, circular photos and card color variety highlight the '58 Colts cards. These cards with their oval posed photos resemble the 1959 baseball set. 

There are ten Colts players in the '58 set plus the team card and I have completed it. Eight of the players cards are framed with orange while the clubs two running backs, L.G. Dupree (yellow) and Lenny Moore (red) are exceptions to that rule. Most of the players are shown in posed action while Moore and DB Milt Davis have portraits. 

As far as prices go the Unitas card, as expected, tops the list. In fact the Unitas card is the most costly card to acquire in any upcoming team set until you get to a handful of 1972 high numbers. 

1958 Topps #120 Raymond Berry

The iconic (well, it is!)  horseshoe helmet makes it's first card appearance this year. It's tucked under the arm of DB/kicker Bert Rechichar.  The players are still wearing the old jerseys with three sleeve stripes. The 'UCLA loops' a.k.a. shoulder loops were adopted in '58 but don't appear until the 1959 cards. 

1958 Topps #74 Bert Rechichar

1958 Topps #117 L.G. "Long Gone" Dupre

The '58 Colts team card is one of my favorites as it shows them in what seems to be a training camp shot and, unlike the upcoming '59 baseball team cards, retains the background to the photo. Add in the old school logo and it's a winner in my eyes.

1958 Topps #110 Baltimore Colts Team Card

The card backs in '58 are the first to employ a 'gimmick', this one being a 'Football Fun' question whose answer is revealed by rubbing the box with the edge of a coin.

The rest of the gaudy red card backs were pretty mainstream with vitals, bios and numbers.

The back of the team card had to be music to the ears of young Colts fans back then. It foretells the soon-to-be championship the club would bring home that fall.

1959 Topps

Topps 1960 baseball set with it's gaudy alternating color lettering received a 'trial run' with the 1959 football set. As defending champs the Colts apparently earned a bigger share of the checklist. There are 15 Colts players included as well as a checklist-backed team photo card and a team pennant card. I recently picked up the pennant card and finished this year off.  

1959 Topps #17 Baltimore Colts Team card/First Series checklist

1959 Topps #68 Baltimore Colts Pennant card

Mostly posed action shot again dominate the team with backgrounds in orange, yellow, pink-red and one green. Johnny Unitas, coming off his remarkable rise to the top of the league in 1958 got the honor of having card #1 in the set.

The leaping colt logo returns, minus the crossbar. Interestingly the little colt has a helmet which is 'white' on some of the cards and colored either light or dark blue on others. There is no rhyme nor reason for the variation as far as card background color or card numbering. I suspect that it is all due to printing variations /flaws. I see some variations of shading on different copies of the same card which also would make it seem like part of the printing process.

The logo colts' white and dark blue helmets can be seen on the Mutscheller and Unitas cards below.

1959 Topps #89 Jim Mutscheller

1959 Topps #1 Johnny Unitas, the Greatest Football Player Ever (Well, he is!)

The team photo card has the Series One Topps checklist on the reverse (see below). The same checklist appears on other team photo cards. Others later in the set carry the Series Two checklist. 

The player card backs and the pennant card back follow a fairly similar layouts, The pennant card has a blurb about the Colts championship and then a 'magic' football question for which the answer is revealed by rubbing the space with a coin. That's just like it was done in 1958.

The player cards have vitals and stats for the 'skill position' players with a short paragraph replacing those stats in all other players (linemen, etc).

Topps was done, at least for awhile, as a football card monopoly after 1959. Fleer entered the picture with an AFL set in 1960 and went head to head with Topps with NFL cards in 1961. Those sets and more will kick off the next post in this Baltimore Colts card history series.

EDIT 10/7/2017

The remarkable blog, The Topps Archive, has posted a truly great and rare find. It's a football counterpart to the 1959 Bazooka baseball set. The cards came on the back of 20 piece gum boxes. Lo and behold the example posted on the blog is of Colts' fullback Alan Ameche.

There is more about this rare and beautiful set in this entry at SCD online. the checklist is below. In addition to Ameche John Unitas appears in the set. There is a third Colts card but that one is a Colts card with a huge asterisk... Giants qb Chuck Conerly is labeled as a Colt but a corrected version fixes his team affiliation. Both versions are very rare as is this set in general. Looks like I have a coupls of new white whales!

• Alan Ameche Baltimore Colts
• Jon Arnett Los Angeles Rams
• Jim Brown Cleveland Browns
• Rick Casares Chicago Bears
• Chuck Conerly ERR Baltimore Colts
• Chuck Conerly COR New York Giants
• Howie Ferguson Green Bay Packers
• Frank Gifford New York Giants
• Lou Groza Cleveland Browns
• Bobby Layne Pittsburgh Steelers
• Eddie LeBaron Washington Redskins
• Woodley Lewis ERR Chicago Cardinals
•  Ollie Matson Los Angeles Rams
• Joe Perry         San Francisco 49ers
• Pete Retzlaff Philadelphia Eagles
• Tobin Rote Detroit Lions
• Y.A. Tittle San Francisco 49ers
• Tom Tracy Pittsburgh Steelers
• Johnny Unitas Baltimore Colts

Here's the Johnny U as seen on the Trading Card Database....

And the Conerly error from the same site:

Brisket....with brisket

This was just too easy.

Brisket Howard made his first out-of-wallet appearance last night. He accompanied my wife and I to dinner. I had a ribs and sliced brisket plate. He didn't eat much and neither did I...I have leftovers for today's lunch. It wasn't a bad meal but I've had better.

I think I will toss something into each #walletcard post, just so I don't get tired of Brisket.

This time I present a '61 Fleer of John Olszewski. He came my way as part of a small lot of cards that contained several Colts. I've become a fan of this set through the Colts cards that it contains, they are just super photos, and in the back of my mind is the idea that one day I may attempt it. If I do, Olszewski will come in handy.