Fun With Football

I've been spending quite a bit of time lately putting together Topps football sets from the 80s. It's my favorite NFL era despite the fact that the Colts bailed in 1984.

I showed the '86 set a month or two back. That will always be my favorite 'modern' Topps fb set. But the follow-up, the 1987 set ain't bad. Topps matched team colors to the cards (mostly), and they could show helmet logos and all that. The flag design element leaves room for a large player pic. I wouldn't call it 'inspired', but it's grown on me. And, hey...Eric Dickerson appeared in those ultra-cool goggles.

I put the William Andrews card here because those Falcon uniforms were amazing. So good, in fact, that I insisted my teams wear similar ones. I got laughed at.

Nice, right? OK, maybe it's just me. But I love the color combo.


Only the Chargers were close.

The set runs to 396 cards including the two checklists which finish it off. Topps used the team-by-team format as they had in '86. Teams are in order of the '86 season records, from the SB Champion Giants, through the other playoff squads, and on down to the 2-win Bucs.



The 80s were a star-laden time in the NFL and obviously, they are all here. Joe Montana on the headset. I used to have a collection of 'Guys on the phone' which showed players using electronic devices, bullpen phones, headsets, microphones, etc, and this was part of it.

All-Pro players like Jerry Rice got a designation under the team name. 

The backs are readable. I've seen plenty worse.

The set starts off with a Super Bowl tribute card saluting the Giants' win the previous season.

 Then we get seven Record Breakers.

Then it's on to the teams. Each gets a highlight-type with a checklist on the reverse and then players presented by position, quarterbacks, running backs, receivers, and on and on through the DBs. Occasionally a team threw Topps a curve and they had to adjust.

In the case of the Eagles, LB Mike Reichenbach takes the spot that would have belonged to Ron Jaworski. Jaws was winding down his playing career and had been released by Buddy Ryan between the time this set was planned and the time it was executed. You may also notice in the scan above that the Steelers only had four defensive players on cards. No more Steel Curtain buy 1987.

There were five Leaders cards. In this case, we have ED and Curt 'The Other One' Warner.

Interesting cards are scattered throughout.

You don't see many choreographed pre-game stretch cards these days.

Pensive kicker being pensive.

Man, the Colts' lack of talent at QB between Bert Jones and Peyton Manning is displayed right here. But by this time I was happy to see it.

Here is the optimally-named Chuck Long.

Mark Malone was entering his fourth year as the Steelers' starter and his 29th year of looking like a Hollywood type-cast badass.

Topps had a few guys designated as 'Super Rookies" including my man, Ernest Givens. 

I'm a sucker for sideline cape shots.

Sweetness!

And Lawrence Taylor, a guy whose personal life drags down his legacy as the best defensive player I've ever seen.

As they did many times, Topps had an insert that featured the 1000 yard runners and receivers of the previous seasons.

I picked this one up cheap. I'm kind of surprised at the fact that sets from the late 90s cost much more than this one. Chalk it up to overproduction.

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.

1969 Baltimore Colts 4 in 1s from Angus

Angus, a frequent commenter*, football fan and blogger (Cleveland Browns-centric Dawg Day Cards) recently knocked two items off my much neglected Baltimore Colts needs list.

These  Topps 1969 inserts called "4 in 1's" are actually stamps which were intended to be separated and placed in the appropriate team folder. They are 'stamps' rather than 'stickers' in that they have moisture (spit!) activated glue on the reverse rather that a peel-and-stick system like the Fleer stickers everyone has stacks of from the 80s.

There were ten Colts issued and many, if not all, use photos that were also used on the 1969 regular issue cards. I think a couple used photos from earlier Topps sets but right now I'm too busy to verify this. You can see more of these in this post from my Baltimore Colts history series.

Johnny Unitas graced the cover of the album which was the same size as the 4 player 'cards', the standard 2" x 3". EDIT: I found this article with more detail on these including a few variations.

Despite of the fact he was the album cover boy (or maybe because of that) he was not one of the two 'Colts Stars' that were featured in the little album's centerfold. 

Angus' swell gift inspired me to go find my final needed stamp card (Willie Richardson) and I snagged it recently. Slowly chipping away at my Colts list will be a fun retirement project.

Angus helped stuff the envelope with this Ray May Action Packed card which I didn't have. Since it was from a 1990s set I hadn't gone after it. But it does picture a BALTIMORE Colt and is intended as a salute to an honor he won with them so I can happily add it to my binder in the miscellaneous Colts card section.

Man, my scanner did a terrible job on this one. Silver foil+embossed surface=multiple attempts to get a usable image. LOL

Angus, thanks so much for the cards, for reading and remarking, and for cranking up your blog again. Maybe the cards I have headed your way will help in a small way to brighten up a lousy Browns season.

*=is that even a word?

This'N'That

I'm pretty sure every blogger has scanned stuff and then 'forgotten' about it. I do that quite a bit. Periodically I go through my Picasa albums and pull up scans that never made it into a post for one reason or another. I label my albums by month so sometimes when the calendar changes scans get 'left behind'.

The stuff in this post comes mostly from my January and February albums. The Ron Kittle card was one I was uploading to a couple of different online storage sites as I was searching for alternatives for the soon-to-be-departed Picasa Web Albums. It sort of got lost in the shuffle.

I got the Kittle from my friend Mike McKay from Chicago who heads south to fantasy baseball camps each winter. He's gotten friendly with the somewhat larger than life Kittle and he's picked up some signed Kittle cards for me in previous years. 

Kittle is a hoot on social media and has a nice little business going making benches and displays out of baseball bats. Thanks, Mike. I always appreciate your thinking of me.

These others are football cards that I picked up at the January card show I attended or I snagged online. 

Jim Katcavage was a standout defensive lineman for the Giants while i was growing up and listening to their games with my Dad.

I found a couple of his cards in the bargain bin. His '69 Topps. that's not pink exactly. Fuchsia? Puce?

I'd buy a '64 Philly Gum of anyone for a quarter. After finding this one I dug thru the bin hoping for more but came up empty. One day I'm going to tackle this set.

I bought the Brodie for no reason at all other than the fact that I always loved the 49ers' unis back then.

I remember my father griping about the Giants trading Erich Barnes to Cleveland in the mid-60's. Hey, the '65 Philly Gum set isn't bad either.

We can file this Fleer sticker Philly Gum logo card (thanks, Jim) under 'Everything old is new again'.

Finally here is the one 1981 Topps/Coke card I needed. This 11 card set paralleled the regular Topps set. I'm not sure why the Greg Landry card out of was so hard to find. I finally found one over the Christmas break for a good price. Now I can scratch one more Baltimore Colts goal off my list.