Nationally recognized football card experts Mike Bonner and Carl Lamendola have written the ultimate vintage hobby guide. The lively and superbly- researched text is supplemented with unique checklists and images of rare items. An absolute must for advanced collectors and novices alike! Collecting Vintage Football Cards A Complete Guide With Checklists Order the complete book from Booklocker.com http://www.booklocker.com/p/books/6647.html?s=pdf or from your favorite neighborhood or online bookstore. Your Free excerpt appears below. Enjoy! COLLECTING VINTAGE FOOTBALL CARDS: A Complete Guide with Checklists Copyright © 2013 Mike Bonner & Carl Lamendola ISBN 978-1-61434-874-0 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author. Published in the United States by Booklocker.com, Inc., Bradenton, Florida. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper. Booklocker.com, Inc. 2013 First Edition COLLECTING VINTAGE FOOTBALL CARDS: A Complete Guide with Checklists By Mike Bonner and Carl Lamendola Henry Ward Beecher’s 1887 Goodwin Champions N162 card, the first football card. This book is dedicated to our families: For Carol and Karen, from Mike Bonner For April and our children, from Carl Lamendola AUTHOR’S NOTE: Most of the chapters in this book previously appeared in a modified form in the following publications: Gridiron Greats, Sports Map, Sports Collectors Digest, Beckett Sports Collectibles Vintage, Beckett Football Cards Plus, Sports Cards Gazette, Tuff Stuff, SGC Collector Magazine, and Allen Kaye’s Sportcards. Grateful acknowledgement is herewith made to the editors of those publications. DEFINITION OF VINTAGE: For the purposes of this guide, the authors have defined the word “vintage” to apply to those football cards and sets, with one intentional exception, that appeared before the pivotal hobby year of 1989. Within the text, the cards are examined in a general chronological order, from the earliest to the latest, covering just over a one hundred year time span. Additionally, we have chosen not to include a price guide for the cards featured in this book. Instead, we recommend the annual Beckett Football Card Price Guide as the most accurate current reference on card values. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: We’d like to thank Frank Rose, Joe Colabella, Don Niemi, Mike Hattley, Mike Moiser, AJ Firestone, Dick Dunlop, Bill Mastro, Mike Blaisdell, John Alutto, Jerry Bell, Ed Kabala, Dan Hitt, Dick Dunlop, Dave Lee, and the late Dave Kelts for their sage advice and expert information. vii Chapter One — Early Football Cards A Rough History of Football stopped card companies from Cards making ever more glitzy Since 1989, an incredible products. outpouring of football cards has However, our main interest been fueled by a surge of in putting together this vintage interest from collectors around guide has been to look at the the country. oldest and rarest of these cards. The vigor demonstrated by Though few in number, the hobby is ironic because compared to baseball, football until the 1980s, football cards cards are fascinating and existed as a poor cousin to the revealing examples of hobby of baseball card American popular culture. collecting. Where do football cards, Even though the first and for that matter, trading football cards appeared about cards in general come from? the same time as the first Sports cards themselves owe baseball cards, they were not as their existence to competition popular as their baseball among tobacco companies in counterparts. Mainstream the late 1880s. football cards practically In those days, tobacco vanished after their debut over firms were in a furious battle to a century ago. When they came attract customers to their back to life during the cultural products. At the time, cigarette explosion that accompanied the smoking was considered a end of World War II, popular manly and harmless habit. interest made it clear that they One day, an unknown were going to be around for the marketing genius conceived the long haul, but in a secondary idea of enclosing small role. cardboard pictures of celebrity Still, that hasn’t stopped and sports figures in cigarette collectors from acquiring them packs, as a promotion. in great amounts, and it hasn’t 3 Mike Bonner & Carl Lamendola The idea took off and soon By 1920, several thousand everybody had cardboard boys baseball subjects had pictures in their cigarettes. appeared on cards. There were images of boxers, Football players were not pool players, singers, so lucky. Professional baseball musicians, cowboys, explorers, had roots in the United States soldiers, vaudeville stars, and from the Civil War forward and baseball players, among many was a natural for card makers. others. Anybody who was No football equivalent to major famous was likely to be the league baseball existed until the subject of a cigarette card. early 1920s. The first American professional football league, the National Football League, was founded in 1921. Thirteen teams with names like the Canton Bulldogs, the Chicago Staleys, the Dayton Triangles, and the Rock Island Independents burst upon a sports-crazed America in the Roaring Twenties. A multi-sport card set was issued by Spalding’s Sports Company of America brand in 1926. The Sports Company set had approximately 30 college football stars and is notable for Album page for the 1887 being the first card set to be Goodwin Champions N162 set issued separately from a tobacco product. The most avidly collected The football hobby of these pictures were the ones considers the Sports Company of baseball players. Adolescent set a minor issue, as the cards boys and young men especially feature only west coast players. seemed to like them. The Sports Company cards are 4 COLLECTING VINTAGE FOOTBALL CARDS scarce and practically unknown In the history of the hobby, to most hobbyists. most years only produced one It wasn’t until 1933, when set. Until recently, multi-set Goudey Gum released another years in football cards were multi-sport set called the Sport rare. Despite what seemed to be Kings, that football cards fertile ground for a new reappeared nationally. Three national sport, the NFL storied football names appear struggled in fits and starts among the Sport Kings set— before the affluent and leisure- Red Grange, Knute Rockne, rich 1950s guaranteed success. and Jim Thorpe. But with only three football cards among stars of many sports, the Goudey set is by football card standards only a minor set. A more important set of 36 cards was issued by National Chicle Gum two years later. It featured pro football players like Bronko Nagurski, Dutch Clark, Beattie Feathers, Bernie Masterson, and a college coach of some renown, Knute Rockne. The Rockne card is No. 9 in the National Chicle set. Sport Kings and National Chicle cards have between The 1952 Bowman Jim them six of the ten most Lansford “Large” card, No. valuable football cards. No 144, a coveted collectible more football cards were produced until 1948, when The 1960s also saw chewing gum brands grew considerable growth in the sport popular in the postwar years. but profits were small because a From 1948 to the present, at competition raged between the least one football card set has two major leagues, the AFL and been produced annually. 5 Mike Bonner & Carl Lamendola the NFL. Not until the 1970s, There are several when a merger ended the explanations why sane people competition, did pro football should choose to make a hobby begin to supplant baseball as of collecting slips of cardboard the national passion. Interest in bearing images of professional football cards have followed the athletes and others. Collectors rise of the sport across the can learn interesting facts, country. make money, and have When the Topps Chewing something to talk about. The Gum monopoly finally ended in hobby even gives people 1989, a pent up wave of new somewhere to go on the cards was swiftly unleashed on weekends. Card shows are collectors. The backwash from popular in many American that wave is with us even now, cities. and all but the sharpest As far as collecting goes, hobbyists have felt its trading cards have most things financially treacherous beat for variety, cost, undertow. convenience, and quality. During the autumn of 1989, Besides sports, dozens of types the number of major card sets of trading cards are being sold. jumped to four. The following Releases include soap opera year five appeared. The big stars, musicians, war heroes, explosion came in 1991, when cars, motorcycles, cartoon thirteen sets were issued. In characters, movie and TV spin 1992, proving it was no fluke, offs, animals, politicians, and twenty major nationally criminals, to name a few. distributed sets of pro football The subjects suitable for stars made it to market. display on trading cards are just Football cards have inundated about limitless. Advances in the hobby market in a most computerized printing remarkable fashion. technology and the peculiar Things have settled down American craving for celebrity somewhat since that great burst mementos have encouraged the of enthusiasm, But today it is recent explosion in trading card still a collector’s market. production. Today it’s much like the days when trading 6 COLLECTING VINTAGE FOOTBALL CARDS cards first appeared in cigarette works: Usually you want to buy packs. But without the smokes. the first card issued of a player Like most pro sports, as a professional. In hobby football cards come major and parlance, it’s the rookie card. minor. In the football card With luck, your player makes it hobby, major cards and sets are to the championship or some distinguished from minor sets other feat of obvious by factors of availability, excellence.