1970 Kelloggs Baltimore Colts

I've got plenty of Kelloggs baseball cards. Probably have every Orioles player that Kelloggs issued but these are my first Kelloggs football cards. I'm not even sure I was fully aware of the fact that Kelloggs made football cards available at all.I know I never picked up any in a cereal box.

The '70 baseball versions were the first 3-D cards for Kelloggs and the football versions are very similar. The set consisted of 60 cards. They were found in cereal boxes AND available through a mail-in offer. John Mackey, John Unitas, Bubba Smith and Tom Matte are the Colts in the set. I picked them up in one transaction recently and they are in generally good shape. They are all curled as you would expect, Kelloggs cards of that vintage all seem to do that. Only the the Unitas card has the usual Kelloggs cracking although they are not as noticeable in hand as they are in the scan. The Matte and Smith cards each have a tiny crack on the upper left only. The corners are sharp.

The cards have a nice write-up on the reverse and a very limited stat summary. They also add a listing of the player's 'Pro honors' i.e. All Pro, All NFL, etc. That's a nice touch. There are no team logos and the copyright credits the NFLPA.  I'm not sure about the Matte card but Unitas and Mackey are shown against a background that is Los Angeles' Memorial Coliseum.

Here are the rest of the Colts:

The Matte card may be my favorite of this set since it's not a picture I've seen before.

This Bubba Smith shot proves that Kelloggs got their pictures from Topps.

Kelloggs' football cards returned in 1971 as another 60 card set. Only Johnny Unitas is a carryover player from the '70 set. In fact only five players total from the 1970 sets were repeated in 1971. And the '71 cards are scarcer due to the fact that they were not available through the mail, only in cereal boxes. I had bought a '71 Mike Curtis card from an online dealer but the dealer refunded my money because they discovered the card was too severely cracked.

So the hunt for the '71 Kelloggs Colts continues.

Football Cards from Fuji

I've already posted the baseball cards that came in the latest envelope from Fuji, and here are the football cards. They really hit my collecting sweet spot. Vintage Baltimore Colts! 

1974 football is not Topps' most inspired design but I do like the way they incorporated the goal post into it. Marty Domres was at the end of a three year run as a sometimes starter for the Colts. As the successor to Johnny Unitas and Earl Morrall he basically was in a no-win situation. And that's pretty much what he did...not win.

A trio of 1971 Colts. All three of these guys were key contributors to some glorious Colts teams. I don't think I had ever noticed that Topps used different sized fonts on the same team's cards. The All Star cards were done in two colors while the non-All Stars were either red for AFC teams or blue for NFC teams.

Oh, that Bubba Smith picture used on his '71 card? Topps got a lot of mileage out of it. I'll document that at the bottom of the post.

Fuji included this Colts' team checklist from the '74 set. Nice little ad on it promoting the purchase of the complete checklist 'set'. You could get all 26 of them for 30 cents and a pack wrapper. 

The back of the checklist had the rules for the 'game' that could be played with the '74 cards. Each had a play outcome on the reverse. You can see the back of Tom Mitchell's card above. Interesting that the checklist and the regular card were done in two different color schemes. I guess a bit of detective work might be in order if I wasn't so busy.

I've cropped and enlarged the 'rules' for your reading pleasure.

Tom Mitchell was the Colts TE in 1972/73, playing alongside Raymond Chester after inheriting the job from John Mackey. Mitchell led the team in receptions in those years but by the time this card was issued in 1974 he had moved on to the 49ers.

This was a terrific package of cards from Fuji. I appreciate his generosity and great writing.

Oh, those Bubba Smith cards with re-used pics? Here they are as borrowed from the net:

1970 Topps, his rookie card:

1972 Topps All Pro card:

1975 Topps:

 1975 Topps:

1970 Kelloggs' card:

That a lot of Bubbas!