New FB Acquisitions

[brafcauknid]

Originally Posted by jefferyepayne

There were lots and lots of really great players in the 20s and 30s who either didn't play professional football at all or had short careers and quit. I think it mostly had to do with deciding that it was time to find a career to pursue as playing football just wasn't lucrative enough to make it worthwhile for most. For those athletes not interested in business, law, or medicine, it seems like coaching / athletic administration was the field of choice and so a lot quit football to become coaches or went straight into coaching after college.

I can probably rattle off 10-20 players that, if they had just continued playing the sport, would be in the pro football HOF today.

jeff

My great uncle Jack Green(who is in 55 all american set) went that route. He had a lot of interest from teams but coaching paid him a lot more, he eventually ended up as head coach at vanderbilt. The $ back then for playing was terrible, hard to comprehend it with todays pro contracts.

[jefferyepayne]

Originally Posted by brafcauknid

My great uncle Jack Green(who is in 55 all american set) went that route. He had a lot of interest from teams but coaching paid him a lot more, he eventually ended up as head coach at vanderbilt. The $ back then for playing was terrible, hard to comprehend it with todays pro contracts.

Wow, that's cool! I'm working on a signed set of '55 AA cards and need Jack Green. Do you have any autographed cards?

jeff

[TanksAndSpartans]

Mike, thats awesome that you got Grange and Nagurski to sign!

I really enjoyed Dent’s book - I’m going to reread it at some point - one of the best things he did to me was bring a lot of the other Bears personalities to life (Luckman, Bulldog Turner, Musso, etc.). My one issue was that, in my opinion, he took some , um…. “creative liberties” - I don’t have a real problem with it - those are the parts that made it so readable - I just don’t think anyone could’ve known some of the details he added. Quick funny story - after I finished it - I checked the Amazon reviews and someone mentioned “written for a high schooler” or something like that - I guess I’m young at heart.

Last thing on the Big Nag, I found a story in the SI vault - from what I recall, he didn’t have great things to say about the wrestling career - he mentioned something to the effect of being promised big paydays he never got. Made me wonder if he wished he had stayed with football. He was definitely a private person like you said. Myron Cope tried to interview him for “The Game that Was” and I believe he said “I don’t have time to reminisce.”

Jeff - thanks for the Nevers footage! It reminded me, in the NFL Top 100 they do have game footage of one play. Strangely enough he’s lined up at wingback and runs a sweep - strange because by the accounts I’ve read his teams played the double wing and he took all the snaps as the fullback.

And finally, pretty cool we found another relative of one of these old time players. Another confirmation that the money wasn't good enough to keep these guys in the game (as players).

[brafcauknid]

Originally Posted by jefferyepayne

Wow, that's cool! I'm working on a signed set of '55 AA cards and need Jack Green. Do you have any autographed cards?

jeff

I have a number of items he had signed but not a 55 topps card, I'll have to do some looking, his son ended up with all his football related stuff when Jack passed but his son unfortunately passed away a couple years ago so I'm not sure where all Jack's football related stuff ended up after that.

[brafcauknid]

My additions for the day...SOOOOOO happy to get the 2 tall boys! Sorry for pic quality.

[jthorst75]

[TanksAndSpartans]

Nice high grade 50 Bowman! I really like that set.

I had a... expensive week - there was a seller on eBay that was originally selling a 35 Chicle set as a BIN. The set was nice - the highlight in my opinion was that the high numbered cards were mostly all midgrade whereas those seem to come up more often in low grades (I talked to a few other collectors though and the consensus was that the pricing for the set was high). Recently, they decided to break up the set. The pattern seemed to be that cards would show up as BINs and then switch to auctions later (with 99 cent starting bids - my favorite). I had my eye on the Hinkle and the Presnell. The Hinkle I needed, but the Presnell would’ve been an upgrade. The day I decided to buy the Presnell, it switched to auction and I wound up loosing the auction as it sold for a price higher than the BIN!

The good news is that I won the Hinkle (which means I'm down to 6 cards to finish the set - 3 high numbers and 3 low numbers). One thing I tend to do when I see a bunch of Chicles being auctioned off is throw out bids even on some I don’t need just in case they sell for below my valuation. And sure enough…. I wound up winning a Knute Rockne as well.

I feel they both sold low - obviously the Hinkle is poorly centered, but it’s not the only one I’ve seen that has the very narrow right border. I like the card’s color - I think it’s reasonably well preserved and the price was right.

Here are the images:

[jthorst75]

[andybecker]

that Hinkle has really nice registration. congrats John.