COTW: Classic Quads OPEY

2009 Donruss Classics Football: Classic Quads: 10

Merlin Olsen, Alan Page, Carl Eller, Jack Youngblood

I made a post on my Curly W blog discussing ideas for my Senators Singles feature on that blog. It is my Senators/Nationals version of this "Card of the Whenever" feature. Just simply a snazzy way to show off one card posts. For that blog I have often considered posting single card posts more often similar to card blogs that specialize in showing off just one card daily posts. Hmm I have a set or two that I have thought about making a separate blog for but that is just in the thinking pre-planning stages, not an actual green light project. The same question of frequency pops up here for the COTW feature. Do I make these things more frequent? I want to but I know I will never have the motivation or stamina to make it a daily thing, not even a weekly thing which is more achievable than daily. The last time I did a CotW it was tacked to the end of another post.

OK so here is a card I had all but forgotten I had. OK I probably did forget about it. I'm sure there are parallels to it I could pursue but I bet they wouldn't have the cool reciprocal serial numbering of this one. Oops I gave away an ancient Chinese secret code to this blog.

I have often liked the Donruss (Original Donruss not the current Panini using the Donruss brand) Classics and the insert sets. Oh man I miss the original Donruss products. Here is one of the base Classic Quads card, at least I think it is the base. It gets confusing when everything is serial numbered. This is a mighty impressive quartet. Merlin Olsen and Jack Youngblood from the Rams with Alan Page and Carl Eller of the Vikings. Check out that serial number. CORRECTION UPDATE: It is the Silver Parallel, the BASE version is not serial numbered.

2009 Donruss Classics Football: Classic Quads: Silver: 10

Merlin Olsen Rams Alan Page Vikings Carl Eller Vikings Jack Youngblood Rams

052/250

I don't recall when or where I got this card from. It might have been either from Ebay or Sportlots. I know it wasn't from CheckOutMyCards because I have the records for my purchases from there and this card is not in the few orders I have made there. If it was from a group box break then it was a very fortunate hit. I did a quick and dirty search of my TCC blog since I started recording my mail days there starting around mid 2007, but saw no indication of this card. It could have come in a huge Team Traders Rams package that had too many cards to count.

Oops it isn't the base version it is the "Silver" parallel. I have updated to identify it as the Silver Parallel.

Updated: 02 May 2018 2;10pm

3 Cards Including A Dupe In A Bat Envelope

I'm not sure what is more exciting about this particular PWE I received the cards or the stamp that was used. OK the cards are what really excited me and the stamp was just an added bonus.

On a typical day last month (January 2016) I got two PWEs in the mail. One PWE had a card I bought from Ebay that I will talk about some other post and the other had 3 cards I got from Sportlots. All 3 cards were from an auction with a .25¢ opening bid plus .99¢ shipping (combined somewhat).

1968 Topps Football: 2 cards both cards a bit offcenter borderline miscut.
106 Ed Meador Rams coin rub cartoon on back totally blank must have been a dud.

(Front and Back)

107 Fred Cox Vikings back cartoon is regular printed one.

(Front and Back)

1963 Topps Baseball:
69 Bud Zipfel Senators. When I bid on this one unfortunately I didn't realize I already had it. Fortunately this one is in better condition than the one I had. So it is an upgrade.

( Front and Back)

Oh a cool thing about the PWE is the stamp was a Batman Forever stamp.

In the long run I'm not sure if I will actually keep the stamp.

Vintage Ramskins 3 Feb - Part 2 Philadelphia

OK so here is part 2 of my sportlots card onslaught for 03 February 2012. The Philadelphia Cards. I don't have much to say about these cards other than I like them and I don't want to go into the whole contract thing about Philadelphia Cards vs. Topps and the NFL vs. AFL and then the merge later on thing. Other blogs and card websites tell the story much better than I ever could. So just enjoy the cards.

First up is the only Redskin in this batch of four cards.EEK this card is as old as I am.

1965 Philadelphia 194 Vince Promuto - Redskins

 Next up a trio 1966 Philadelphia's. I like this particular year of Philly cards probably because the yellow banner at the top looks kind of like the vintage magazine covers from that era Like Sports Illustrated. OK so maybe not exactly, I'm not sure if any magazines from that era had a yellow (or some other color) banner at the top, but it looks like it should be on a magazine. One of my first cards from this set is Merlin Olsen's Card #102 (which I feature in my blog logo at top - or one of my blog logos if it currently is not featured)

 1966 Philadelphia 98 Marlin McKeever Rams

The odd and slightly annoying thing about these 1960s era Philadelphia cards is the "Guess Who?" questions on the back, the answers given are to a question on another card. I'm not sure how they determined which answer to put on which card they appear to be totally random. For instance this card's back (card 98) gives the answer for card number 42's question and the answer for this card's question is found on card number 154. A better way to do it is to put the answer on the next card, then that will leave one card without a question? Another way it has been done is to put the answer at the bottom of the card and upside down.

1966 Philadelphia 98 Marlin McKeever Rams (back)

So here is is QB from the 1965 Los Angeles Rams team. Bill Munson played on the Rams from 1964-67, his played on a few other teams until 1979. Tragically Bill died at age 58 found drown in his swimming pool on 10 July 2000.

1966 Philadelphia 101 Bill Munson - Rams

This next card is one of the Team Play cards which even though there are Rams in the picture, the card and the play is actually for the Minnesota Vikings. That year the card set was organized alphabetically by The Teams city, the card order was the Team card usually a team photo (1966 was the Atlanta Falcons first season so their team card featured the team logo), the featured players and an In Action Play card (again a team logo card for Atlanta). That is part of why I like many of the vintage years the cards were well organized. Now who knows what their reasons for the particular order they put the cards in is? The play on this card (from the game played 03 October 1965) gained a first down for Fullback Bill Brown despite Merlin Olsen's efforts spoiled by Larry Bowie.

1966 Philadelphia 117 Minnesota Vikings Team Play Card

1966 Philadelphia 117 Minnesota Vikings Team Play Card (back)

Stancraft Playing Cards Vikings Edition

 

For about $10 (w/ $2.75 shipping) from Ebay I got my third deck of playing cards from the Late 1960s Stancraft NFL Team series. This one is the Minnesota Vikings boxed. The box is in nice condition, so nice I couldn't tell which card was glued to the box as the sample.

 

Joker Style 1 from Box

This makes the collection 3/16 complete (of course I'll need to also get the Rams in a Box since I just have that one as a sealed deck.)

Atlanta Falcons

Baltimore Colts

Chicago Bears

Cleveland Browns

Dallas Cowboys

Detroit Lions
Green Bay Packers (Box)
Los Angeles Rams (Sealed "loose" pack)

Minnesota Vikings (Box)

New Orleans Saints

New York Giants

Philadelphia Eagles

Pittsburgh Steelers

San Francisco 49ers

St. Louis Cardinals

Washington Redskins

Teams in RED I need. Have teams in BOLD w/Box or Sealed "loose" Pack.

Deck Collection 3/16 Complete.

Mid 1970s Wonder Bread NFL

Back in the day one of the biggest food companies and Topps produced some nice card sets that were included in the food product. I am talking about WONDER BREAD. In 1974 -76 they made some nice, although small, Football sets.

The designs are both nice and pretty plain. The 1974 set takes the design of the 1971 Topps Football set, while the 1975 and 1976 seem to be unique to themselves.

I will concentrate this post on the 1975 set as that was the only one I had any cards of way back then. My mom wasn't much of a fan of the bleached white Wonder bread so we would usually get either the store brand or Whole Wheat breads when I was a kid. So it was sort of rare when I would get some of these things. Wonder Bread also did some non-sport sets the most popular would probably be the STAR WARS and maybe the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (The original series) sets. (I'll try to post some pics of those sometime later, I don't think I have any scanned).

OK so way back in '75 I managed to get these two cards from this 24 card set:

#21 TED HENDRICKS

#17 FRANCO HARRIS

Those two cards were pulled directly from the product, the only way to get these cards back then. A few years later when trading card shops started popping up during the hobby boom of the early 1980s it was possible to start getting these from other sorces and even some of the factory sets. So my copies of these cards are pretty yellowed on the back and the white parts on the front from being in actual contact with the bread. I forget if they put them in those little plastic packs back then or not. Even if they did cards pulled directly from the bread bags are most likely never going to be anywhere near NM.

For the longest time those were the only two cards from this set that I had. It also seemed that I would be forever doomed to only having just those two, um this was before the internet and places like Ebay where now if you are patient enough you can find a decent set for a pretty good price, but I had to do things the hard way and find the set in bits and pieces So I do have a few cards from this set for trade (I'll list those toward the bottom of this post). OK so I pieced the set together mostly by winning some Ebay auctions, and I think maybe one or two purchases from sportlots.com (either in the direct stock, or in the 1,2,3 Auctions they have).

Here are a few of my fave cards from this set:

#4 KEN HOUSTON#7 TOM MACK

#13 BOB GRIESE

The Bob Griese card was not too difficult to get with today's internet. I got it from Ebay and the seller appologized for it being in such poor condition. When I got it I was like "What's wrong?" OK so the corners are not prestine sharp and the edges have a tiny bit of wear, but that doesn't make me sad about it.

Now the cards that eluded me the most and I had Dicken's of a time trying to pin down. They were cards #15 Chuck Forman and the first card #1 Alan Page. Since they both are Vikings maybe it was an ancient Viking curse I was a victim of. I would keep finding partial sets, that had almost everyone but these two, especially Mr. Page. He was the very last card I managed to find. Odd as often people manage to get the first card of a set or some of the early ones and decide to acquire them in order. Anyway it took about 34 years to complete this 24 card set, with probably only about 10 years of actually trying hard to find the cards other than in passing.

#15 CHUCK FOREMAN

#1 ALAN PAGE

One thing about the design of this set that for several years I couldn't place since I only had the two cards was how they were organized. I haven't quite figured out the reason for the numbering but I eventually discovered the pattern to the RED and BLUE borders. At first I thought it may be the traditional AFC/NFC thing, but after getting more cards from teams of the same conference with different color schemes I knew that wasn't it. It isn't by team either as there are a couple of teams that have 2 players as you can see there are two Vikings and one is Red the other Blue. Well with the full set and studying the cards carefully, I discovered that The DEFENSE is RED and the OFFENSE is BLUE. Mystery Solved.

I don't have any of the 1974 set yet. I'd like to start getting some of those or find a nice conditioned set. UPDATE: I now have my first 1974 Wonder Bread Card: # 15 Tom Mack - Rams. Received in mail on 13 Nov.

I do have a complete 1976 set. Over the years, now many of the players from each of these sets are now in the NFL Hall of Fame.


Here are my Duplicates from this set and also my lone duplicate from the 1976 set that are up for trade.

1975 Wonder Bread
#2 Emmitt Thomas - Chiefs
#7 Tom Mack - Rams (2)
#9 Isaac Curtis - Bengals (2)
#22 Levi Johnson - Lions (2)

1976 Wonder Bread

#14 Jack Youngblood - Rams