Card Show Potpourri

I hit the hotel card show on Saturday. Having nothing in the works in terms of set building gave me the chance to just schmooze with some dealers and pick through my friend Darryl's cheap vintage boxes and cherry-pick a few things I thought were nice. I went home with about twenty vintage cards. Here are a few of them. And note that my scanner likes to cut off borders and I'm too lazy to re-scan anything at the moment.

Do I collect Dick Allen? Mmmmmmmaybe. I have plenty of his cards, that's for sure. I bought the '64 because I'd given mine away to a friend who was lamenting losing his childhood Phillies collection. I put together the 1964 Topps Phils team set for him. It was really neat to see how much he enjoyed the cards from his favorite Phils club ever.

This '76 is an upgrade to the one in my set.

'75 Luis Tiant. I have this in my '75 set of course but it's also gonna have a spot in my 'cards I like just because' binder.

Not my favorite Gale Sayers card but it helps fill out his page.

Darryl had lots of '69 Topps football in really nice shape. This set is very condition-sensitive and I could use a bunch of upgrades. I don't yet have a list of cards in my set that could be improved upon but here are three I bought for the simple reason that they were nice enough to buy on spec.

Vintage Giants cards remind me of my father.

I think I already had this Elvin Hayes card. He does UH basketball radio color commentary and walks right by us every game. I still haven't asked him to sign anything. I haven't seen anyone else ask either, so I'll wait.

Artis Gilmore came thru Houston when he played for Jacksonville U. He was part of a 7 foot-ish tandem post with a guy named Pembrook Burrows. Both schools were sort of wild, outlaw programs at the time and the games were a blast. Jacksonville made the NCAA final in 1970. Burrows went on to become a Florida highway patrolman and Gilmore had a long pro career and is in the hoops hall.

Darryl pulled out a huge box of 80s/90s cards that were part of a buy he made a few months back. He had promised me some Eddie Murray cards because of a friendly argument we had over Murray's Hall of Fame credentials. I had the mainstream cards of Eddie with the Orioles but few, if any, of him in other teams' gear. Darryl said I could just take anything I wanted.

The box had all the routine Topps, Fleer, Donruss cards and some oddballs as well. I ended up pulling one of each different card even knowing I had many of them already. I'll post a sampling of them.

I wish Upper Deck was still in the card making game. If they were I might still be in the pack buying game.

Back in 1988 I bought a box of those Topps-issued schoolkid folders that were replicas of this Topps card. There were 15 or twenty in the box. Over time, I gave them away to kids at my school I still have two.

1990 Fleer. Junk wax at it's finest.

'92 Topps something or other. Topps Kids?  I don't remember this.

I normally ignore stuff like this but it's actually sort of fun. The back is cute.

Stickers posing as cards. Why?

Another nice Upper Deck Eddie. At this point in his career, Eddie had decided that appearing to have some fun out there wouldn't kill him.

'93 Fleer. I don't even know if this is the regular issue for that year or not. By '93 I was out of the card hobby and close to being out of the fan business as well. I was hanging on by my fingertips and a year or so later the strike/lockout/stoppage came along and stomped on those fingers.

That's it for tonight. This show was the first one I've attended without a want list in hand. TriStar is coming up so I better get to work on something.

Card Show Stuff

After a series of unavoidable events caused me to miss a few months I finally made a hotel card show in October. I'm not chasing any baseball sets and the one football set I'm building (1964 Philly Gum) wasn't in great supply among the dealers of vintage cards. I was able to add a couple of stars from that set.

So I made do with grabbing some cheap cards that just caught my eye. I'm not sure what attracts me to cards of coaches like this 1954 Topps Ray Blades. But I added it to my stack and I'm glad. Blades was a player I wasn't aware of but in the 1920s he carved out a nice career as an outfielder with the Cardinals. As the back of his card notes Blades hit .342 in 1925 during a string of .300+ seasons. You can check out his SABR bio here.

Blades was one of those baseball 'lifers' who played, coached, managed and scouted for numerous clubs thru several decades. He managed the '39 Cardinals to a second place finish in his first year at the helm but was fired early the next season after the team stumbled early.

When I see these cards of coaches I always wonder if Topps someone else in the checklist originally but had to remove them for some reason.

Here's my first Dom DiMaggio card, a decent 1953 Topps.

Not much to say other than I don't think I was aware of the fact that Dom was four inches shorter than his more famous brother.

I love this 1960 Topps of Ralph Felton. I didn't know him when he played but a quick search showed that he won a national title at Maryland and played 11 seasons of pro football with the Redskins and Bills. He was better known as 'Rass' Felton and opened a grocery after his playing days.

There is something about the 1960 Topps football set that just makes it appear to be a much older set. I can't really explain it but the set strikes me as something from the mid 50s.

George Webster was a terrific player in his day with the Oilers. He was an All American safety at Michigan state but the Oilers made him a linebacker. The story goes that as a rookie in a 1967 exhibition game against the Cowboys he caught Bob Hayes from behind. I was at that game at Rice Stadium but I have no recollection of that. I do remember Hayes made a long catch and run on what was a rainy night.

My scanner didn't do a very good job on this 1970 Kelloggs' 3-D Webster. It's a really neat set. Very underrated.

One of Webster's teammates at Michigan State was Gene Washington. His is a pretty remarkable story of growing up as an athlete in Texas. His home town had no high school that would allow blacks so he took a bus to Baytown, across under the Houston Ship Channel, to all black G. W. Carver High School. He played football and ran track and set records against other black high schools in the Prairie View Interscholastic League. 

He went on to become an All American for the Spartans and is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame. As for Carver...it's still there in Baytown. It's no longer a 'stepchild' and no longer a high school. I've taught and coached there for nearly 29 years. Gene has visited a few times and is a gracious, soft-spoken gentleman. When I look up from my door at school every day I see a fantastic framed nearly life-sized photo of him in posed action for Michigan State. Next to that are framed banner listing the football, hoops and track state titles the Gene Washington and his schoolmates won while at Carver. 

This is a 1971 Topps Gene Washington game card. It's the spiritual brother of the 1968 Topps baseball game inserts. Pretty neat. I can't believe I never thought to pick it up for my GW collection before this. Washington played seven NFL seasons, all for the Vikings. There is a neat video on the Vikings site. It's part of a documentary done by Gene Washington's daughter chronicling his 'road' to Michigan State and the pros. It's well worth the 10 minutes. 

And finally a Cal Ripken medallion card from one of the Topps issues of 2017.  This was a freebie. One of the regular dealers at the show was ripping mini boxes (probably looking for Aaron Judge cards) and this was some sort of insert. I've bough enough stuff from him that he will sometimes toss Orioles things my way. 

And yes, the medallion appears to be crooked. That's not a scanning error. 

I'm actually closely reading the back for the first time and see that it came out of Update. Likely to be the only card out of that set I'll own. 

I was only mildly disappointed at the lack of vintage football at the show. There are plenty of dealers who carry football cards but they stock mostly new stuff. 

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.

Card Show Football Gems

I spent Saturday at what I had hoped was going to be a big card show in Houston. Turned out that the venue was big (George R Brown Convention Center in Houston) but the number of tables/dealers and the crowd that attended could have easily fit into a much smaller site. But no matter, the dealers there had plenty of what I was looking for, vintage Baltimore Colt cards.

I spent about three hours bent over tables shuffling through boxes of football commons from the 60s and 70s and I was able to really pare down my wantlist. And despite my vow to focus purely on finding the Colts I needed I was distracted now and again by a few other cards which made me stop and take notice of them.

The first such card was the 1972 Carl Eller that's up top. The dealer whose box it was in was watching me pull cards and chatting when I held that card up and said something like 'this is one awesome football card!'. He looked at me like I was stupid. I tend to forget that for a lot of dealers cards are just a commodity to be bought and sold for a profit. The aesthetics of said cards are pretty much irreverent to them. That's not always the case but I've found it to be true in a lot of cases.

But that card. Eller wearing the helmet during warm-ups on a gray fall day in Yankee Stadium. Just looking at it brings to mind being in our '64 Impala with my family and listening to Marty Glickman do play-by-play of my Dad's precious New York Giants. Plus, Carl Eller is an all time great. So Mr. Dealer, it IS an awesome card. BTW...there is a slabbed one on eBay right now graded '10' that's sporting a $1353.99 BIN asking price. I got this one for 50 cents.

And then there is this......

A 1981 Topps Bob Griese from another cheap card box. Those glasses, holy cow. Did Bob Griese really wear those while playing? Indeed he did.

Finally there is my new 1968 Jerry Stovall card. Stovall sports one of those old fashioned 'ear bump' helmets with a two bar mask. And there is that 'Runnin' Redbird' logo. There is just something about this one that reached out and grabbed me. I couldn't pass it up.

Now this bonus gem, a 1973 Johnny Unitas card came my way for a dollar. I already had a nice copy in my Unitas collection but  I bought it because 1) how can you pass up a career era Johnny U card at that price, even one as mis-cut as this is and 2) there is a blogger I read regularly who collects mis-cut cards. I just can't remember who it is. Joe? Jeff? Fuji? Anyone? Speak up and I'll ship it your way.

Monday Morning Quarterback #31 Greg Landry 1980 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 as we will see. 

NFL Info: Greg Landry had a long professional career, mostly with the Detroit Lions from 1968 through 1978. He had a couple of different stretches as starter during that period then moved on to the Colts for a couple of seasons including as the starter in 1979. He finished his playing days with the USFL and a stint with the 1984 Bears.

Fantasy Impact: I had Landry as a reserve briefly in 1981. I picked him up as a 'handcuff' to Bert Jones (although that term wasn't used back then). When I acquired Tommy Kramer for Jones in mid-season my need for Landry was gone, and so was he.

The Card: The 1980 Topps design is about par for that era's Topps football course. Without the official NFL license Topps couldn't use the teams' logos. The name box with the football could have been smaller but there is still plenty of picture expanse on there.  The back isn't the easiest to read but it sure includes a lot of stuff, stats, cartoon, vitals, and a random fact.

I actually like the design but I can't tell you if it's how i see the card or because of the general wave of nostalgia I feel for vintage-y football. Landry looks to be working out pregame in a nearly empty stadium.

Homework

Lots of stuff on my plate at the moment. Weekends have been crazy. But I wanted to take time out to post a couple of neat vintage football cards that I grabbed as "COMC order rounder-outers" a couple of weeks ago (You've done that, right? Added some stuff you were not looking for to justify the $3 shipping. Sure you have).

That's Football Hall of Famer 'Deacon Jones on his 1967 Philly Gum card. You'll see him referred to as 'David' from time to time. But 'Dave'? That's pretty weird to me. But as Dave, David or Deacon he was about as great a defensive lineman as you could ever hope to see. He was part of the Rams' Fearsome Foursome which consisted of Rosey Grier, Lamar Lundy, Merlin Olsen and Jones. They terrorized NFL quarterbacks through the early to mid 60s.

This isn't Philly Gum's most inspired design.

The 1966 Philly Gum Bob Boyd. Here is another guy who I knew as one name but almost always is referred to by another. I always called him Bobby Boyd. 

No matter, he was a standout DB for some great 1960s Baltimore Colts clubs. I used to have a black and white Polaroid picture of Boyd that I took at Colts training camp many years ago. This picture is better, as is the '66 Philly Gum design. This set always tempts me as one I'd like to chase. 

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!