New football collector here

[jefferyepayne]

Originally Posted by DezHood

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!

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

[Footballdude]

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/

[TanksAndSpartans]

Originally Posted by Footballdude

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.

[jefferyepayne]

Originally Posted by DezHood

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.





An Ad back





jeff

[TanksAndSpartans]

Originally Posted by jefferyepayne

Here's one of my bio backs.

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

[PowderedH2O]

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.

[jefferyepayne]

Originally Posted by PowderedH2O

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