Happy Birthday Number Nine!

23 August 2013:
It is NFL Hall of Famer Sonny Jurgensen's 79th birthday. Happy Birthday Sonny! Here is what was on Facebook this morning on the Redskins Page:

image from Redskins page at Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/redskins

Another birthday mention is on the blog "Can't Have Too Many Cards" with some cool Sonny pics, some of which I hadn't seen before.

Sonny J. is one of my All-Time favorite QBs if not my favorite. He is best remembered as a Redskin, but he started his NFL career in Philadelphia with the Eagles.

1958 Topps Football 90 Sonny Jurgensen RC Eagles

In 1964 Sonny was traded to the Skins in a trade that involved QB Norm Snead. That meant that a few of his late 1960s trading cards even though they were labeled as him being on the Skins, used  an old photo of him in his green Eagles jersey.

1968 Topps Football Stand-Ups Insert 10 Sonny Jurgensen Redskins

A couple of my fave Sonny cards I have scanned. There are a few more in my Sonny PC but I don't have them scanned or at least don't have the scanned images online anywhere yet.

1970 Kellogg's Football 53 Sonny Jurgensen Redskins

1970 Topps Football Mini Glossy Insert 20 Sonny Jurgensen Redskins

OK this last pic is not a card but it is cool memorabilia. In 1971 (and '72) The Mattel Toy company made little battery operated "toy" record players with 2.5" discs of the popular sports figures of the day. Called Instant Replay I got this Sonny Jurgensen one off of Ebay for $6.99 + $2.00 shipping.

Happy BirthdayGood old number Nine, I'm not sure why the Redskins have not retired his number yet. They should before some hotshot kid claims it and has a terrible career while wearing it, or someone from another team that wears the number like Mr. Romo gets traded to the Skins. Oh I did a quick Google and technically not retired, The Redskins have a sort of non-retirement policy, his number along with several other Redskins legends like John Riggins are "Unofficially" retired.

Mattel Instant Replay Discs

 

 Back in the day early 1970s around '71/'72 Mattel released a wonderful electronic audio toy. The Portable Instant Replay Record Player. The hand held audio device used batteries (1 D cell) and played these little 2.5" records. The player came with 4 discs to start your collection off, then they sold sets of 4 discs of football, baseball, basketball, racing and mixed sports. I forget if Hockey was included or not. The little button on the side basically was just a play/eject button, it might of had a fast forward but I think it was just play/stop/eject. Every once in a while Ebay will have some of the discs available and sometimes the players.

Instant Replay Black Disc back.

I had the blue version of the player which I think was the first generation one, my brother had the Red version which I think came about a year later (1972) with "double sided" discs. Those discs had two pictures on the disc but I think just played on one side. The quality of the recordings was not that great, and as your battery ran down so did the playing of whatever was on the disc.

Back in the day my brother and I had about two dozen of the discs or so. There were many players I recall knowing about because I had this "toy". Over the years the discs were lost to time, or rather the "utility room" in our basement. Many of the discs sell for between $10-$30 or more sometimes you can find lots of several of the discs for a better price.

Anyway my rebuilt collection of the discs (useless as audio records unless I can find a working player for a decent price) are shown below. The Frank Robinson disc I got for $15.00 at my local card shop and the Sonny Jurgensen I got for $6.99 (+$2.00 postage) from Ebay.

 

 Sonny Jurgensen

The Ebay seller sent as a bonus an unopened pack of 1991 Upper Deck The Quarterback's Challenge cards distributed by Domino's Pizza. I'm debating if I should open the pack or not.