Will the joe namath rookie card Topps 1965 become the next Mantle 52?

[TanksAndSpartans]

Great Thread!

I think Peter hit the nail on the head when he said this:

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.

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.

[jefferyepayne]

Originally Posted by DezHood

Great Thread!

I think Peter hit the nail on the head when he said this:

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.

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. Anything earlier than that they don't even recognize the names. That's been my experience - admittedly a very small sample size.

I think there lots of reasons why football fans feel this way:

1. The NFL does a horrible job of glorifying its past ... its just not something they seem to care about doing. Baseball does a much better job.

2. Football is often considered the perfect sport for TV and, perhaps because of this, players / teams prior to the TV era of the 50s don't get a lot of attention. The popularity of football exploded when it moved to the tube.

3. The rules have changed soooo much that nobody from way back owns any of the major records any longer so their names never come up. People can't identify with a QB who has the same number of interceptions as touchdowns or a completion percentage of 50% as being any good. Way back those were considered pretty good numbers! At one time throwing for 3,000 yards in a season was a MAJOR accomplishment. Today QBs might get fired for that low of a yardage total.

jeff

[Peter_Spaeth]

Baseball is also just more conducive to people relating to individual players. They aren't hidden under a helmet for one thing. For another, they are out there alone at the plate, on the mound, in the field, for prolonged periods of time where they can be seen and studied. Football for better or worse is much more of a team game, where the whole team moves for a few seconds at a time. And baseball is much more conducive to statistics as well.

[D. Bergin]

I seriously don't get the Namath thing myself. He's essentially in the HOF for making a guarantee of a Super Bowl win. A game he pretty much Trent Dilfer'd his team to a win in. In the modern era they at least have the guts to hand the MVP award to one of the Jets Defensive players, or at least Matt Snell, instead of Namath.

He had a couple seasons he threw for a lot of Yards in the AFL, and also a ton of Interceptions.

There's probably a handful of QB's who played around his era who put up better numbers and will probably never get a sniff of the HOF, and somehow Namath slipped right in with little resistence.

Outside of the relative difficulty of the card, I don't understand why it's such a holy grail of the hobby.

Maybe compare him to Johnny Mize or Lou Brock (no slouches), but Mantle is a head-scratcher for me.

Not that it's not a valid question as his cards ARE very extremely sought after compared to others of his era. I just don't quite get it.

[TanksAndSpartans]

Jeff - those 3 points were great - honestly some things in there I never thought of.

Namath is a legitimate HOFer. It's not a stretch to say he's a top 100 player, even if I'm sure I'd have him lower because I'd rank a bunch of guys from the 20s and 30s no one ever talks about. I don't have much problem with any of the accolades Namath has gotten. The SB III MVP I'd have given to Snell or the Jets defense for some key interceptions, but I don't think Namath was a bad choice. That being said and I started a thread on this, that rookie card is over priced to me. I don't have one

[jefferyepayne]

Originally Posted by DezHood

Namath is a legitimate HOFer. It's not a stretch to say he's a top 100 player, even if I'm sure I'd have him lower because I'd rank a bunch of guys from the 20s and 30s no one ever talks about. I don't have much problem with any of the accolades Namath has gotten. The SB III MVP I'd have given to Snell or the Jets defense for some key interceptions, but I don't think Namath was a bad choice. That being said and I started a thread on this, that rookie card is over priced to me. I don't have one

+1000

There's a lot more reasons why Namath is in the HOF other than guaranteeing a Super Bowl.

I believe his signing by the AFL truly legitimized the league and was instrumental in getting the NFL to the table to agree to a merger.

He was also a PERSONALITY ... one of the most visible and famous of all football players during the 60s and 70s. Playing in NYC was definitely part of his appeal. Also his looks and lifestyle.

When Namath was the first QB to throw for 4,000 yards in a season in 1967, he beat the old record by 300-400 yards and his record was not broken until the NFL went to a 16 game season in 1979.

jeff

[TanksAndSpartans]

This is an older thread i stated on the Namath rookie: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthr...ghlight=namath

[skelly]

Football cards one major advantage working in their favor. People who like to collect sets can put together football sets from the 50's and 60's without killing themselves. I was chipping away at the early 70's baseball sets, and I woke up one day and was like "what the he$$ am I doing" I'm still 60-70 cards away and I've been working on these for what seems like forever. You can pick up a lot of commons and semi-stars from say the 1968 topps football set for like 100 bucks and then you're like "wow, I need like another 30-40 cards for the set, this is doable." Truthfully it just doesn't make financial sense to peace together vintage baseball sets. Younger generations will never have the patience, baseball is already becoming about the star cards, and that will continue in my opinion. Even though vintage football is out there, its not as common as baseball. Football continues to grow in popularity, while baseball has become a suburban sport ( granted those are the people who generally collect cards in the first place ).