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August 23, 2005
Topps Football
Cards
The 2005 football season is upon us. Fans and
collectors are getting ready for some great football, football cards and
memorabilia. This season is Topps 50th Anniversary set. For fifty
years Topps has produced a professional football set of either NFL or AFL
players. What a run!
I have started opening up single packs of 2005
Topps. This year’s set looks great and collectors should have no problem in
putting together a base set. What will also be nice is that beginning on the
weekend of September 10, collectors will be able to go into participating hobby
shops and buy one pack of Topps football cards for a nickel on weekends during
the season. That should prove fun and interesting. A nickel is what I paid for
my first packs of Topps football cards way back in 1965-40 years ago.
I have a complete run of Topps football card
sets from 1956 to 2004. I shouldn’t have any problem in completing this year’s
base set. I also have one wrapper from each Topps set from 1956 to 2004. Topps
also printed sets in 1950 which were called Topps Feltbacks, a small card with a
college player on the front of it and a small pennant on the back of it. In
1951 Topps printed a 75 card set which was called Topps Magic. The front of the
card had a college player on it and the back had a silver scratch off section
which allowed you to scrape it off and reveal an answer to a question that was
listed there. Four years pass and in 1955, Topps printed in my opinion of the
greatest vintage football card sets of all time, the All-American set. This set
featured 100 cards of some of the greatest football legends of all time. This
set has the legendary Four Horsemen of Notre Dame, Sammy Baugh, Knute Rocke, Red
Grange, and Otto Graham just to name a few football immortals. The card had a
profile photo of the player with an action shot in the background and the
player’s college listed on the front and a nice write up on the back of the
card. The color on these cards was incredible for that time. In my collection,
I have the completed 1951 Magic and 1955 All American sets. The 1950 Feltback
set is brutal to put together and I am not even close to completing it. For
wrapper collectors, these three sets prove to be a great and costly challenge.
Those three wrappers are on my wantlist.
In the 1960’s with the addition of the American
Football League, Topps printed the only AFL cards from 1964 to 1967. The 1965
set had the Joe Namath rookie card in it, giving that set great value. The
Philadelphia
card company printed the NFL players sets from 1964 to 1967. Beginning in 1968
and also 1969, Topps was the sole producer of cards and printed a combined NFL
and AFL until the merger of 1970. In 1960 to 1963 Fleer produced a AFL set,
while Topps produced the NFL set. The only exception to this was in 1961, when
both Topps and Fleer included both AFL and NFL players in their sets. This
lasted only one year and in 1962, they went back to the Topps having a NFL set
and Fleer having an AFL set. To me these are classic cards.
Collectors with some work and money can put
together this run of Topps football cards from 1956 to 2005. Online auctions
provide a great way to find cards and increase your collection. When I was
putting together this run I relied heavily upon mail order dealers and card
shops. Both avenues have changed dramatically with the Internet.
Congratulations to Topps. I will keep
collecting their base set each year. I eagerly await their packs and have fun
opening them. I can still remember going in to the local five and dime and
buying my Topps packs. I can still picture those cards and taste the bubble
gum. What a great time and what a great run.
Until next time good luck with your
collections.
Bob Swick
has been collecting football cards since 1965. He also collects programs,
yearbooks, media guides, ticket stubs, pocket schedules, and team photos of the
Green Bay Packers, of which he is a shareholder. He is a contributing writer to
“Gridiron Greats” magazine. He is also a member of The Professional Football
Researchers Association
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