1971 Topps Football - anyone else collecting this set?

[G1911]

Found in a small lot of 100ish 71's, 3 pretty out of register commons and another 'purple sky' printing issue. Nice surprise when these worthless but cool defects come in in lots.

[G1911]

Some surprise mail from a board member. Love the misprints, miscuts and other factory mistakes. The upside down wrong back is a centered #108 Dan Sullivan on the front

[familytoad]

Big thanks to Greg for a pair of my favorite card ever… #186 Jim Kiick!
It was just a generous random act of kindness. Two Kiicks in the mail is tough to beat!
So great, great!

Originally Posted by G1911

Some surprise mail from a board member. Love the misprints, miscuts and other factory mistakes. The upside down wrong back is a centered #108 Dan Sullivan on the front

[wpeters]

I would like to resurrect this thread once again. Is it possible for a cello pack to have both first and second series cards in it? I have a cello pack with Jim Hart on the front and Austin Denney on the back.

[jingram058]

Originally Posted by wpeters

I would like to resurrect this thread once again. Is it possible for a cello pack to have both first and second series cards in it? I have a cello pack with Jim Hart on the front and Austin Denney on the back.

Resurrect away, this is a great football set. Don't know about the series of these cards, though

[G1911]

I don’t know either, as I’m too cheap to have cracked any unopened material from this set. I sure would love too though!

I would definitely think it a red flag, Topps typically didn’t mix series (certainly some exception, but atypical). I’ve never heard of 71 series 2 issues (which this would have to be) including series 1 cards as well.

[familytoad]

Red Flag to me.
I tend to think this is a wrap job.
Although they were the first cards that I ever collected seriously, I’ve never seen them mixed series.

OK, I probably have more of these cards now that any sane person (32 full sets and 47 partial sets, plus thousands more dupes) and while I did buy a lot of them as a 9 year old, truth is we only had a couple stores that sold them. In my hometown I never saw any 1971 cello boxes at all. But I do recall being able to buy the 1970 cards a year later than they were issued. So the shopkeeper was likely just selling old stock, but I remember the cello boxes of 1970 being in the store at the same time we all were buying wax packs of 1971. Cards were 10 cents for a wax pack and often that was all the money a young boy could scrape up.

I never saw a 1971 cello but that does not mean much. I do remember when it finally occurred to us that some wax packs had different cards in them after weeks/ months of getting doubles. We weren’t smart enough to realize that Topps sold their cards in series. But the next spring/summer we all figured it out while collecting the baseball cards. We almost stopped buying because we kept getting the same cards…until a fresh box would come out and it was terrific fun to see new players!!
That was my first foray into collecting and here I am 50+ years later still doing it!