1960 Topps Football

Set size: 132
Short printed High Series: None
Card Size: Standard 2 1/2" x 3 1/2"
Corrected Errors and Variations: none
Best card: Johnny Unitas
Key Rookies: Forrest Gregg
Subsets: Team cards (with set checklist on back)
Gimmick: Coin rub comic strip
Back ink colors: Green
League: NFL
Team Logos? No
Night Owl Style Nickname: The "'57 Style" set
Teams included in the set: Baltimore Colts, Chicago Bears, Cleveland Browns, Dallas Cowboys, Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, Los Angeles Rams, New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles, Pittsburgh Steelers, St. Louis Cardinals, San Francisco 49ers, Washington Redskins (Italics indicates first appearance for the team in a Topps set)
Why I chose this card: Bob looks pretty happy as he elbows the two people standing beside him in the face.


One man's 'boring' is another man's 'elegant'. I'll just call it 'basic'. This is one of the most straightforward sets you'll find. A large photo adorned only with an overstuffed football containing the name and team makes up the front. A one-color back dominated by a scratch-off cartoon that takes up over half the card. A set that fits on one 132-card sheet with no variations or corrected errors. A card number that is completely readable. Even the checklist is brutally efficient as all teams are grouped together in a Fleer-like fashion. A simple, no-frills, solid workhorse of a set. This is the Volkswagen Beetle of football card sets.

If you're unsure why I chose Johnny Unitas over Jim Brown for the best card in the set, you need to read your copy of The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book again. This set has a special place in my heart because I managed to buy a brick of over 40 cards from the set dirt cheap when I was a kid. I had an idea that I could actually complete the set one day since the star cards were not too pricey and there were no really big name rookies in the set. That's probably true still today, knock out Johnny U and Jimmy B and the rest is just perseverance. There are a ton of errors in the set including misspelled names, mixed up positions and reverse negatives but none of them were ever corrected so there's no variations to chase. Cowboys fans get to see their team in a Topps set for the very first time in 1960. Cardinals fans get to see their team's cards debut in a city they likely don't care about anyway, St. Louis Fans are more interested in their Rams (who got smoked by Matty Ice this afternoon). Ha!

1960 Topps card Gallery at Vintage Football card Gallery
(Click on that link if you really don't know what I mean about the Johnny Unitas card. Seriously, it's a hoot!)

1959 Topps Football

Set size:176
Short printed High Series: First series (1-88) is slightly more scarce than the second series.
Card Size: Standard 2 1/2" x 3 1/2"
Corrected Errors and Variations: none
Best card: Jim Brown second year
Key Rookies: Sam Huff, Alex Karras, Bobby Mitchell, Jerry Kramer, Jim Taylor (UER), Jim Parker, Max McGee
Subsets: Team cards, Team pennant cards
Gimmick: Coin rub trivia
Back ink colors: Black
League: NFL
Team Logos? Yes
Night Owl Style Nickname: The Day-Glo Burlap set
Teams included in the set: Baltimore Colts, Chicago Bears, Chicago Cardinals, Cleveland Browns, Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, Los Angeles Rams, New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles, Pittsburgh Steelers, San Francisco 49ers, Washington Redskins (Italics indicates first appearance for the team in a Topps set)
Why I chose this card: BUZZ NUTTER




Yep, this series is back. I shall attempt to get up to at least the '70s by the time to season is over, but as you all know, I am a slacker and I have 170 unfinished posts in my draft folder to prove it. If you've forgotten what this is all about, basically when Topps lost their football license last year I vowed to honor their memory by doing a profile on each of their football base sets. Then I got sidetracked, and skipped a few months and in the meantime Topps got the license back, so there's not really a point now. I'mma do it anyway. Here are the first three profiles:

1956 Topps
1957 Topps
1958 Topps

This set was the largest Topps football set to date at 176 cards. I'm not sure if Topps actually went as far as to release the set in two separate series, but cards off the first sheet of 88 cards are slightly more scarce than the ones on the second sheet. The design seems pretty far-out for the stodgy Eisenhower era. The player's photo is superimposed on what appears to be day-glo burlap, with an interesting team logo stuck wherever it would fit. The name of the player is spelled out in alternate red and blue letter that not only foreshadows the 1960 Topps baseball design but is actually more eye-straining than the names on that set. Thankfully the position and team name are in simple clear black type that acts as a palate cleanser after the assault on your eyes.as wacky as the design is, it really seems to work well with all the portraits and posed action photos of the old-school football players.

As flamboyant as the fronts are, the backs are very austere. The backs have a portrait orientation, the only color used is black. The name, position and team are embedded in a solid black strip at the top, with the card number residing inside a football on the left of the bar. Right underneath that is a small block of statistics or a small paragraph for linemen or other players with no stats. Fully two thirds of the back is dominated by a scratch off trivia cartoon puzzle. The amount of space devoted to the instructions for revealing the Magic Answer is equivalent to the footprint of the box of statistics. Apparently scratching the card to reveal the answer is a big no-no among graders, meaning you can find scratched up copies in otherwise good condition cheap.

The set is notable for not only for the large amount of Hall of Famers in the set including a second year Jim Brown and card #1 Johnny U, but for a pretty darn good rookie class. Any set with the rookie card of Mongo is one well worth collecting. The Jim Taylor rookie card is somewhat odd, instead of a picture of the Packers' Jim Taylor, there is instead a photo of the Cardinals' Jim Taylor. Topps made the same mistake in 1960, so Jim Taylor's first card with the right Jim Taylor is from 1961 Topps, technically giving Jim two rookie cards. Along with the team card subset that returned from the previous year, Topps also added a Team Pennant subset. The cards had the goofy burlap background with a nice looking team logo pennant. The team name is on the top in the alternating color style of 1960 Topps baseball. Underneath the pennant is a football themed line drawing and a list of Championships the team won, if any. It's a very unique subset of the original 12 NFL teams. My favorite card in the set - and maybe in all of Topps Football - is this one of Buzz Nutter, who to my surprise has not been mentioned here yet.

1959 Topps Football card Gallery from www.footballcardgallery.com

A very nice article on the set by TS O'Connell.

1958 Topps Football

Set size: 132 cards plus one Free Felt Initial offer card
Short printed High Series: None
Card Size: Standard 2 1/2" x 3 1/2"
Corrected Errors and Variations: none
Best card: JIM BROWN ROOKIE CARD
Key Rookies: Jim Brown, Jim Brown, Jim Brown, Jim Brown, Jim Brown, Jim Brown, Jim Brown, Sonny Jurgensen, Jim Brown, Jim Brown and Jim Brown.
Subsets: Team cards
Gimmick: Coin rub trivia
Back ink colors: Red
League: NFL
Team Logos? No
Night Owl Style Nickname: The Oval set
Teams included in the set: Baltimore Colts, Chicago Bears, Chicago Cardinals, Cleveland Browns, Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, Los Angeles Rams, New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles, Pittsburgh Steelers, San Francisco 49ers, Washington Redskins
Why I chose this card: I have a thing for huge fullbacks charging like madmen.



Thought I forgot about this series, didn'tcha? I FORGET NOTHING. I just lose track of it for months at a time. Today we have the 1958 Topps football set which looks to me to be a first draft of 1959 baseball. It's got an oval around the player instead of a circle, and no mod font without capital letters, but the similarities are there. This is a pretty straightforwards set. A meat & potatoes set. 132 cards, the whole set fits on one sheet. No errors or variations. The backs are sort of unconventional with white on red type and a scratch off cartoon that takes up half the card but they had to go a little wild somewhere. This would bet the perfect set to try to collect right? A real working man's set. Wrong. Two words:

Jim Brown

Jim Brown's rookie card is in this set. This is the greatest Vintage football card ever. Period. No arguments. It's the greatest, there are no Topps football cards better. Even Mohammed Ali says that card is the greatest. GREATEST KNOWS GREATEST AND 1958 JIM BROWN IS THE GREATEST EVER. So if you decide to go for this set one of two things will happen:

1) you will chase after all the inferior cards first and then get intimidated by the cost of the greatest football card ever,

2) you will go ahead and buy the Jim Brown, realize you hold in your hand the pinnacle of all footballcarddom and give up on the rest of the set because what's the point?

Jim Brown makes this set uncollectable by conventional set building standards. This is one set where it is perfectly acceptable to buy the set complete because otherwise it is an exercise in frustration.

Another fun thing to do for all you football card fans: When all the new football sets start coming out go on eBay and search for all the sick Mojo hits. The Tebow triple autopatch red parallel foil hologram 1/1 with real dried SEC championship game tears right on the card. Compare the price of that bullshitty card to the price of a Jim Brown rookie. Laugh and Laugh and Laugh at that poor deluded fool who just wasted his money on crap when he could have had the greatest football card ever in existence in this universe. It's hours of fun for the whole family!

1957 Topps Football

Set size: 154 plus one unnumbered checklist
Short printed High Series: Cards #89-154
Card Size: Standard 2 1/2" x 3 1/2"
Corrected Errors and Variations: #58 Willard Sherman no team name on front
Best card: Bart Starr RC
Key Rookies: Starr, Johnny Unitas (!!!), Paul Hornung, Raymond Berry, Earl Morrall, Dick "Night Train" Lane
Subsets: None
Gimmick: Cartoon on back
Back ink colors:Red & black
League: NFL
Team Logos? No
Night Owl Style Nickname: The Split Screen set
Teams included in the set: Baltimore Colts, Chicago Bears, Chicago Cardinals, Cleveland Browns, Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, Los Angeles Rams, New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles, Pittsburgh Steelers, San Francisco 49ers, Washington Redskins
Why I chose this card: Torgy! Also.

Topps followed up their first NFL set with one that had a fairly unusual design. The card is horizontal, but is split into two halves - the left half has a portrait of the player and there is an 'action' shot on the right. The split card somewhat resembles the 1941 Double Play baseball set, only with the same player on both halves of the card. It's almost as if Topps saw the set as two mini cards in one, as the back of the card is also split perfectly down the middle, with stats on the left and a large cartoon on the right. I know for a fact that had I been collecting cards in the '50s, there would be no way I could resist cutting at least a few of these things in half and making little 1950 Bowman sized cards. Other than the odd bifurcation of the card the actual design is extremely similar to the 1956 Topps set. The front is still essentially a picture of the player in front of a solid color background with a box at the bottom with the name. The backs are still red and black with a bio paragraph, stats and a cartoon. Even the card number is on the same top left corner inside a little football.

The first standard sized football card set from Topps also has some of the first really iconic NFL cards. Rookie cards of Johnny Unitas, Bart Starr and Paul Hornung can be found in the '57 Topps high series. I'm sort of assuming that the cards were released in two series, it could simply be that the higher numbers were printed in lesser quantities. At any rate, cards #89-154 will cost you about twice as much as the lower numbers, and of course the three most desirable rookies are in the high numbers. The two keys in the set are Starr and Unitas. Both are rookies, both are legends. Unitas probably has the bigger 'wow' factor of the two cards, but due to a printing quirk Johnny U's card was double printed making the Starr more scarce.

So what do I mean by 'double printed'? Trading cards are printed on large sheets, at least they used to be. I'm not sure what witchcraft goes into printing these newfangled cards nowadays. You may have seen an uncut sheet of cards from a Topps set from the '80s or '90s before. Here's one from 1997. The sheets for the 1957 Topps football set had 88 cards to a sheet. Since there are 66 cards from #89-154 and 88 to a sheet, 22 of the high numbered cards were printed twice on the sheet. Johnny Unitas was one of those 22, making his card a little easier to find than Bart's. Here is the complete list of double printed card numbers:

91 92 93 98 100 103 107 110 111 113 120 122 124 127 129 138 139 140 143 148 149 153

Why those cards were picked, who knows? Johnny U fans were blessed while Packer fans curse Topps to this very day. Topps mostly stuck to set sizes that were some combination of 132 and 88 cards, but they did get a little short print happy in the mid-'60s. More on that later. There are two insanely difficult cards in this set other than the big rookies. The first is one of the very few corrected error cards in an early Topps football set. Card number 58 of Willard Sherman can be found with or without a team name on the front. The variation missing the team name is extremely scarce, although the insane action photo makes the corrected version very desirable as well! The other impossible card is the unnumbered checklist. Like the 1956 set, the checklist is nearly impossible to find in good condition and is easily the most expensive card in the set. Yes, you heard me right, the checklist is more expensive than the Starr and Unitas rookies. A LOT more expensive. To add insult to injury to all the completists out there, the checklist can also be found with a yellow color variation.

1957 Topps Football Card Gallery from www.footballcardgallery.com.

1956 Topps Football

Set size: 120 cards plus one checklist and 5 contest cards
Short printed High Series: None, but Chicago Cardinals and Washington Redskins cards are short printed
Card Size: 2 5/8" x 3 5/8"
Corrected Errors and Variations: none
Best card: Lenny Moore RC
Key Rookies: Moore, Joe Schmidt, Roosevelt Grier
Subsets: Team cards (1st appearance)
Gimmick: Trivia cartoon
Back ink colors: Red and black
League: NFL
Team Logos? Yes
Night Owl Style Nickname: The Big Set
Teams included in the set: Baltimore Colts, Chicago Bears, Chicago Cardinals, Cleveland Browns, Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, Los Angeles Rams, New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles, Pittsburgh Steelers, San Francisco 49ers, Washington Redskins (Italics indicates first appearance for the team in a Topps set)
Why I chose this card: A 228 pound Tank (back when 228 lbs. meant something) rumbling ahead at full steam.

This is the very first NFL set put out by Topps and the only one in the 1952-1956 "large" card size of 2 5/8" x 3 5/8". The design is pretty simple. A photo of the player surrounded by a white border on top of a solid color background. The player's name, team and position in found in a small box at the bottom. In the upper corner, there is also a team logo. I'm not sure if these were official team logos or something Topps hashed together, but they're quirky and pretty neat looking.

The backs have large, very readable number on the top left corner inside a football. Get used to the number in a football motif, you'll be seeing it A LOT. The backs also feature the typical biographical info, a paragraph write up on the player, a bar of stats featuring the past year and career statistics and a trivia cartoon. I'm not sure a card back can get much better than this.

There is no scarce high series in this set, but Cardinals and Redskins cards are significantly harder to find than other teams. The toughest card in this set is the no-numbered checklist. Don't even think about finding one of these in any kind of decent shape for less than a Franklin. Also expect to pay a premium for team cards as many of them were probably chucked by frustrated kiddos who wanted individual player cards back in the day. There are no variation cards in the set, but there is one uncorrected error. Even though the Cleveland Browns were NFL champions in 1955, the Rams (who were pounded in the championship game 38-14) were credited as NFL champs on their team card. Cleveland fans just can't catch a break, can they?

1956 Topps Football Card Gallery from www.footballcardgallery.com.

RIP Topps Football - 1956-2009

Wail, weep and woe! King Topps has been unfairly stripped of its NFLPA license! 55 years of history flushed down the toilet! Football shall never recover! Topps is doomed! The hobby shall falter! All is lost! I'll never buy another football card again! Everything is ruined forever!

Well, actually Topps has been doing football cards since 1948, not 1956. And they didn't have NFL cards at all for four of those years. And no NFL Properties license (or logos) for another decade or so. And absolutely no talent for making football cards at all, ever. And they have an exclusive license to produce cards for the only sport that really matters. And MMA and Wrestling licenses that will probably outsell most of the other sports. And a bunch of non-sports products. And they'll probably run a a double reverse around the license and put out something football related anyway. Oh, they also sell gum.

Topps will be fine. I'll be fine, you'll be fine, the hobby will be fine, everybody will be fine. However, I simply cannot let such a melodramatic wave of retro nostalgia angst go to waste. This is a golden opportunity to begin a huge long-ass project that I've wanted to do for 2 years but don't really have time for and will end up abandoning about a third of the way into it anyway when I get bored or distracted or evicted from my house or something. So with no further ado (lies!) here's the beginning of...

CARDBOARD JUNKIE'S REVIEW OF EVERY TOPPS FOOTBALL BASE SET EVER

Let's start with the early days of Topps football cards before they got mixed up with that newfangled NFL. What an unmitigated disaster that was, just look how it turned out for them! They shoulda stuck with the college cards, like they did with these four sets here:

1948 Topps Magic

Set size: 252 cards over 19 series
Actual football cards in the set: um, 18? maybe?
Card Size: 7/8" x 1 7/16"
Best card: Doak Walker, maybe Chuck Bednarik
Rookies: probably all of 'em

I don't have any of these cards so I used a 2009 Topps Magic insert to illustrate what they kinda sorta looked like. These cards were an early early trading card gimmick. The cards came out of the pack blank, when you got the card wet and pasted it to the wrapper or put it in direct sunlight or some such nonsense the picture would 'develop' and you'd have a card with a really faded and blotchy image of some celebrity or whatnot. This was Topps' first set of anything ever so it'e pretty historical. Not historical enough for me to pick up even a type card, apparently.

1950 Topps Felt Backs

Set size: 100 cards with 25 extra color variations
Card Size: 7/8" x 1 7/16"
Best card: Joe Paterno
Rookies: most of 'em

I don't even have a reprint of these scarce little buggers. Haven't even seen one in person that I can recall. You can take a look at 'em here and here if you wish. Check out the crazy eyes on Harry Ulinski! These cards were tinly like the '48 Magic cards and had a black & white image of the player surrounded by a solid color border on the front, and a felt college pennant on the back. The fronts have red, blue, green or brown borders with the colors divided equally in the 100 card set. Cards with a brown border can also be found with a scarce yellow border variation. The best card by far in the set is one of Joe Paterno, back when he was quarterback of Brown university. There are also four hall of famers in the set and a college football card of 1958 AL MVP Jackie Jensen. If anyone out there actually has one of these things in their collection, please let me know because I've seriously never even seen one before.

1951 Topps Magic

Set size: 75 cards
Card Size: 2 1/16" x 2 15/16"
Best card: Vic Janowicz? Really?
Rookies: I don't know, man. I don't have a good football price guide to tell me these things.

This is the set Topps resurrected into an odd retro college sticker auto set this year. The cards are a little bigger and have full color fronts this time. Topps still gimmicked up the set with a scratch-off trivia question on the back. If you lose your mind and decide you just have to collect a complete set of cards from the '50s, this might be a good one to tackle. There are only 75 cards in the set, making it the smallest Topps football base set. There are also virtually no stars in the set at all. My ancient football card price guide from 1985 shows only 7 out of the 75 cards in the set book for more than the common price. Those players are: Babe Parilli, Bill Wade, Jim Weatherall, Marion Campbell, Bert Rechichar, John Bright and Pittsburgh Pirate outfielder Vic Janowicz. The most interesting card in the set has to be George Young, the long time NFL executive who built three Super Bowl champs.

1955 Topps All American

Set size: 100 cards, cards 93-100 are short printed
Card Size: 2 5/8" x 3 5/8"
Best card: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Other good cards: Jim Thorpe, Knute Rockne, Red Grange, Amos Alonzo Stagg, Sammy Baugh, Otto Graham, Sid Luckman, Ernie Nevers, Don Hutson.

As far as I'm concerned this is the greatest football card set in the history of carddom. The set features some of the absolute greatest players in college football history. The design is absolutely unique with the color action photo superimposed ove a black and white stock football photo. The college logos were made up by Topps and are often completely random. There's even a trivia cartoon on the back. A full gallery of the cards can be found here. A good look at the two best cards in the set, Jim Thorpe and The Four Horsemen, can be found here. The most interesting card in the set is one of Byron "Whizzer" White, who later became a Supreme Court Justice. He was also the guy who accidentally ran backwards 51 yards on a play resulting in an NFL record for biggest yardage loss on a play from scrimmage. Oops.