Great Thread!
I think Peter hit the nail on the head when he said this:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth
Unlike baseball, the relatively early stars (Graham, Baugh, Motley, Hutson, etc.) just do not seem to be revered. Not sure why that is. Football is as or more popular than baseball as a sport but the history seems much less important to fans and collectors.
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I've talked to people who are completely football obsessed - spend their whole weekends watching/travelling to college and pro games etc. But if you talk history with them its Jim Brown, Lombardi's Packers, Gale Sayers - that's about it. (They recognize there was a pre Super Bowl era (barely), but it's as if the first 35-40 years of it never happened.) Anything from the early days they don't recognize the names. That's been my experience - admittedly a small sample size.
And Jeff, I mentioned this in a few other threads - in my view Chicle prices are not only down, but falling. Hopefully, its just a natural ebb and flow and they'll recover, but I'm at least a little concerned. I'm seeing it on the mid and low grade cards - there is no question there. On the high grades, I'm not sure - I noticed one or two PSA 7 cards go low, but the centering wasn't good enough to draw a conclusion. The Nagurski transcends the Chicle set - HOF rookie, top 100 cards in the hobby, etc., so I wouldn't expect it to fall, but I'm not seeing a rising trend on low grade decent eye appeal examples like these:
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odkw...3+HOF&_sacat=0
To get back on topic, Namath really isn't Mantle in terms of playing career. Very roughly and very subjectively if you take Mantle as #9 all-time as per ESPN and you look at the NFL top 100 produced by the NFL Network:
1986 TOPPS JERRY RICE
1958 TOPPS JIM BROWN
1982 TOPPS LAWRENCE TAYLOR
1981 TOPPS JOE MONTANA
1976 TOPPS WALTER PAYTON
1957 TOPPS JOHNNY UNITAS
1984 TOPPS USFL REGGIE WHITE
1998 SP AUTHENTIC PEYTON MANNING
1955 TOPPS ALL-AMERICAN DON HUTSON
1966 PHILADELPHIA DICK BUTKUS
Unitas may be the closest analogy to Mantle since he's a QB and QBs seem to be the most popular football players and they both have a rookie card from the 50s. Unitas didn't play in NY though.