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1967 Royal Castle Miami Dolphins Specs
Year: 1967
Title: Royal Castle Miami Dolphins
Size: 3″ x 4-3/8″
Number in Set: 28
1967 Royal Castle Miami Dolphins Overview
In the late 1960s, there were over 150 Royal Castle hamburger chains in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Ohio; around 40 were in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Monroe Counties. It appears there’s just one left now!
In 1967, the chain released what’s now one of the rarest AFL issues in the Miami area, celebrating the Dolphins. According to the back of the card, they gave out two new photos weekly during the season. Given that the season had 14 weeks, and they gave out two cards a week, it follows that there are 28 cards. However, 10 of them appear to have been short-printed. Because the cards are unnumbered, and the release order is unknown today, collectors have guessed that either the promotion didn’t go well, so they didn’t print a lot of the last cards, or the promotion went super well, and they increased production after the first five weeks.
However, there aren’t many copies of the non short prints either. PSA has only graded 171 cards (SGC has graded 40) across the entire 28-card set, most being 6s and 7s. And when it comes to the short prints, there is just a single PSA-graded example of nine of them and two of Abner Haynes. You can see photos of every card in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.
The fronts of the cards have an orange border with a black and white posed player photo within a white box on the top ~80% of the card and a white box with their facsimile autograph on the bottom 20% of the card. The back has simple player vitals, the restaurant’s and Dolphin’s logos, and instructions on how to get the entire set.
1967 Royal Castle Miami Dolphins Significant Sales
In May 2012, Heritage Auctions sold what was then the #1 graded set (7.19 GPA) on the PSA Set Registry for $1673; it only included 16 cards.
SCP Auctions sold a lot of 15 cards for $686 in December 2019.
Here are a few examples of individual card sales from the set; I couldn’t begin to estimate the prices for the short prints:
- 1967 Royal Castle Miami Dolphins Billy Joe PSA 8: $275 in May 2020
- 1967 Royal Castle Miami Dolphins Billy Neighbors PSA 6: $99.99 in April 2019
- 1967 Royal Castle Miami Dolphins Bob Petrich PSA 7.5: $236.99 in May 2020
- 1967 Royal Castle Miami Dolphins Dick Westmoreland PSA 8: $315.99 in May 2020
- 1967 Royal Castle Miami Dolphins George Chesser PSA 8: $259.94 in February 2022
- 1967 Royal Castle Miami Dolphins Howard Twilley Jr. PSA 8: $350 in May 2020
- 1967 Royal Castle Miami Dolphins LaVerne Torczon PSA 8: $315.99 in May 2020
- 1967 Royal Castle Miami Dolphins Maxie Williams PSA 8: $301 in August 2021
- 1967 Royal Castle Miami Dolphins Rick Norton PSA 9: $246 in December 2019
- 1967 Royal Castle Miami Dolphins Wahoo McDaniel PSA 8: $450 in March 2020
1967 Royal Castle Miami Dolphins Example
1967 Royal Castle Miami Dolphins Key Cards
The set’s key card is the pre-rookie short print of Brian Griese.
1967 Royal Castle Miami Dolphins Checklist
Joe Auer (short print)
Tom Beier
Mel Branch
Jon Brittenum
George Chesser
Ed Cooke
Frank Emanuel (short print)
Tom Erlandson (short print)
Norm Evans (short print)
Bob Griese (short print)
Abner Haynes (short print)
Jerry Hopkins (short print)
Frank Jackson
Billy Joe
Wahoo McDaniel
Bob Neff
Bill Neighbors
Rick Norton
Bob Petrich
Jim Riley
John Stofa (short print)
Laverne Torczon
Howard Twilley
Jim Warren (short print)
Dick Westmoreland
Maxie Williams
George Wilson (short print)
Jr. Dolphin (short print)