New football collector here
 

Didn't see a specific forum for new user intro's for this football forum so thought I'd park it here.

My name is Richard and I've been collecting cards for the better part of 40 years, starting out with baseball and gravitating to football specific about 20 years ago.

My main focus is set building and my goal, hopefully before I die, is finishing sets of most major issues from 1948-1988, ungraged. So far, I am at around 80% complete overall. My sets will include all variations of cards, such as the "purple sky" color variations from the 1963 Topps set.

Some sets I am not worrying about, as they will be too cost prohibitive for me, such as the 1952 Bowman Large. And some sets just don't do it for me like the '55 All-Americans.

For now, I will just snoop around this forum.

Hi Richard. Welcome to the forum!

welcome
 

Welcome and good luck lots of great people on this Forum!!!

Welcome.

The 1955 Topps All Americans is one of my favorite sets :)

Welcome Richard! Good luck on your set run and let us know what you need so we can help. Some people on here have, er, a few doubles ...

http://photos.imageevent.com/ltsgall...40227_0001.jpg

jeff

P.S. I couldn't resist!

Thanks alot guys!
Regarding the '55 All Americans, I know I'll probably make some mortal enemies with my views. I've always viewed the set as something similar to the 1960/61 Fleer Baseball Greats sets. More along the lines of a commemorative set, highlighting players from the past. They are kind of neat, I'm just not willing to pay the money for them. I've got a few that I found here and there cheaply enough however.

jefferyepayne - I'll keep that in mind because I have about 60 multi-level wantlists.

My problem is that I am just getting back into collecting after an 8 year layoff (marriage, family, etc...) and have very limited, sometimes non-existent, hobby money to play with. Collecting now is alot harder for me compared to when I was single and had relatively few responsibilities. But I am determined to meet my goal.

This is a very reasonable point. To me the key cards are:

ERNIE NEVERS
DON HUTSON
WILBUR (FATS) HENRY
MEL HEIN
BENNY FREIDMAN
FRANK (BRUISER) KINARD
CLARENCE (ACE) PARKER

Without AA, you'd have to settle for an even later commemorative issue to get a card into your collection.

Welcome to the Forum!

I'll assume that list represents All Americans who went on to greatness as pro's, who never had a regular issued card? If so then that's kind of along my thinking as well. In fact one of the few I do have is Ace Parker, for that very reason.

Exactly. Each of those are HOF "rookie" cards. I knew four off the top of my head, but had to check on Friedman, Kinard, and Parker. Hutson could have had a 35 Chicle as he was a rookie, Hein disappointingly only possibly appears in the card of his teammate John Del Isola's 35 Chicle, Friedman like Red Grange retired right before 1935 (Grange had some pre 1935 cards however so his AA is less significant to me), Kinard and Parker retired before the 1948 issues and Nevers and Henry are really from the early days.

The last thing I want to do is pile on because I know this is a favorite set of many and I definitely feel the aesthetics (and obviously star power) are above average, but I would have been a lot more impressed if the action photo was of the player like 62 Topps.

What are your thoughts on the 1926 Spalding Champions set? Athough it's a multi-sport set, there are 14 football players including Friedman and Nevers. Up until a few years ago I had never even heard of this set?

I too think it's a nice looking set, but trying to put 60+ sets together and having very limited hobby funds, I have to make some concessions when it comes to spending. Sets like the AA's and 51 Topps magic set, being an all-college player set, aren't on my list to collect. But there are individual cards i do collect in each.

Thanks for letting me in on that - honestly it is the first I'm hearing of it now - I guess I'm too willing to accept what the standard opinion is of a rookie card and as a result I'm just learning about Shotwell Grange, matchbooks (many matchbooks of players predate the 35 Chicle card of same player) and now this set recently. I'm sure others know more than me - I'm going to have to do some homework now. Anyone out there collect this Spalding set or at least the football players? Who are the other 12 players?

While perhaps not mainstream, many of these guys ARE available on older items than the 1955 AA set. Check out

1926 Spalding
1928 Star Player Candy
1930s Wheaties sets
1930s Diamond Matchbook Cover sets

Off the top of my head at least Nevers, Friedman, Hein, and Hudson are in at least one of these sets.

jeff

Here is a link to nearmint.com webpage showing all the football cards from the Spalding Champions set. It looks like Friedman and Nevers will carry a pretty hefty pricetag.
http://www.footballcardgallery.com/s...ing_Champions/

Thanks - I saw that too. Also searched eBay and MSB - I bet the HOFers don't come around too often. From what I saw so far, the backs are either blank or have an ad - disappointed as I would've liked to see what a bio from the 20s was like.

There are three backs. Blank, ad, bio. It is believed that the blank backs came from uncut sample / salesman sheets. I'm not sure it is known whether the ad backs and bio backs were distributed differently.

And good luck finding the HOFers. POP on those is extremely small. Here's one of my bio backs.

http://photos.imageevent.com/ltsgall...ilsonfront.jpg

http://photos.imageevent.com/ltsgall...wilsonback.jpg

An Ad back

http://photos.imageevent.com/ltsgall...pischfront.jpg

http://photos.imageevent.com/ltsgall...ppischback.jpg

jeff

Awesome! Thanks Jeff. That's actually a really thorough write up - they did a nice job.

The Spalding Champions have a great design and are gorgeous. At various times I have owned quite a few of them. But, as I get older, my eyesight gets worse and those tiny little cards are just too small to read for me. If you haven't owned them, they are about half the size of a small Bowman football card. Maybe, the size of a postage stamp. If those cards were even close to normal size I think they would be much more popular.

Also, I like the Topps All-American set, but I've never felt that I had to have it. I suppose I will pick up the cards one of these days, but it isn't high on my priority list. So, you are not alone.

The writeups are nice but I completely agree with you, Sam, about the size. They would be totally awesome if they were at least as big at the '50 Bowman set. I've been working on this set for 5-6 years and it is a bear to complete.

Note also that although the official checklist is 14 cards, that doesn't include the Red Grange that appears to have only been distributed as a salesman sample so there are really 15 images to pick up.

jeff