Football Cards

1955 Topps All-American Jim Thorpe Original Wire Photo

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Here’s the original picture used for Jim Thorpe’s 1955 Topps All-American card.

The April 2002 auction that featured the item described the original wire photo as 8’’ by 10’’ and taken between 1919 and 1920, capturing Thorpe posing as a member of the Canton Bulldogs. The reverse has the original paper caption and two stamps: “Central Press Association September 21, 1935 Reference” and “National News Photos, Inc.”

This photo was enhanced for newspaper use, including details added to his leg pads, helmet, and hands.

1961 National City Bank Cleveland Browns Jim Brown

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Over my years studying the post-war hobby, I can’t recall ever reading about the 1961 National City Bank Cleveland Browns set. The priciest card to sell from it is this PSA 9 Jim Brown, which sold for just over $20k in Memory Lane’s Summer 2022 Auction.

National City Bank released the 36-card set in sheets of six to depositors in the bank’s Quarterback Club.

Besides the Jim Brown, the set’s most desirable cards include the Quarterback Club Membership Card, Len Dawson, Lou Groza, and Bobby Mitchell.

Naturally, since drafting this post, I’ve been seeing these cards everywhere!

Frank Gifford 1959 Bazooka Box

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I’d love to know if a complete (18 + 1 variation) 1959 Bazooka Football Box set run exists in the hobby. Larry Fritsch always said the Chuck Connerly variations were the toughest to track down, but there can only be a few of this Frank Gifford copy that was auctioned off in April 2003.

From a printing perspective, these Bazooka gum boxes first had baseball players on them; football players came later in the fall. The belief is that the Conerly’s, Groza, and Tracy are short prints. That’s mostly a conclusion related to the baseball cards and then football card availability. A forum user wrote, “In early 1959 Topps released a nine card Bazooka baseball card set on the bottom of 25 piece Bazooka gum boxes. The promotion was so popular that they added 14 additional baseball players to the set later in the season. These 14 are short prints. Late in the year, Topps replaced the baseball players on Bazooka boxes with football players. The SP’s are likely ones added later just like the SP’s in the baseball set.”

1957 Topps Paul Hornung Rookie Card Original Artwork

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Here’s the original artwork used as the foundation for the 1957 Topps Football Paul Hornung rookie #151.

The flexichrome, a full-color painting on a black-and-white photograph, is 3-3/8” x 4-3/4”, larger than the finished card. The back of the art piece has working pencil marks and adhesive residue.

The item came from the 1989 Guernsey’s Auction, where Topps sold a large portion of their archives.

1950 Bowman Football Uncut Sheet

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This 36-card uncut production sheet of 1950 Bowman football cards is a legitimate work of art. I definitely need to pick up an early Bowman-era sheet to display in the Hobby Library.

It consists of cards 109 through 124. Card 144 in the bottom right corner is missing a piece, and there is also a stain, mostly evident from the back, which affects four cards.

Lelands sold the following pair of 36-card uncut sheets in December 2001 for $1491; one is the same but without the missing piece.