Attention Cowboys Fans! Its The Dallas Cowboys Complete Football Card Guide

I just received a copy of The Dallas Cowboys Complete Football Card Guide from Fleer Sticker Project contributor Steve Liskey.

Steve runs the website TheCowboysGuide.com which is a great resource for Cowboys fans with tons of information on the Cowboys and a look back at a number of vintage Cowboys items. This lastest edition is Steve's 4th edition of the Guide.

Here's a look at the cover:


The guide provides a comprehensive checklist of every Cowboys card that has appeared in every set from 1960 up through the current 2008 season. There are color pictures showing a sample card from each set:
In addition to regular football cards, the Guide is an excellent resource for oddball items like the many Fleer issues this website is so fond of:


Steve has been a great help to me in better understanding the mid 1970's Sunbeam releases, and sure enough, they're covered here as well:


The book also has sections on Media Guides, Pocket Schedules, Game Programs, Starting Lineup Figures, and Pennants. There are a number of sets that I was not previously aware of covered in the book as Steve covers over 7,000 sets in the Guide.

If you like the Cowboys, I highly recommend this book as Steve has done a great job putting together the ultimate Cowboys collector checklist. All other team collectors should be so lucky to have such a comprehensive collecting resource for their favorite team!

The Greatest Game Ever Played - Sports Illustrated's coverage of the game

After watching ESPN's presentation of The Greatest Game Ever Played last night, I visited the Sports Illustrated Vault to see what the immediate reaction to the game was to get a sense of what people thought about the game immediately after it was played:

The article written by Tex Maule appeared in the January 5, 1959 issue. As the title of the article shows, it didn't take long for this game to take on its now almost mythical status.



If you have trouble reading the pictures of the pages, the article is reprinted on the Sports Illustrated vault site.

Here's the cover of the issue:


Then two weeks later, SI followed up in its January 19, 1959 issue with a more detailed breakdown of the game by Tex Maule, with dramatic drawings by Robert Riger to recreate the action instead of photographs:


I really like the diagram of the field with the 13 play drive that Johnny Unitas led to drive the Colts to victory.

Here's the cover of the January 19, 1959 issue. Note that SI was still very much a sportsmans magazine at the time as opposed to a magazine primarily focused on professional sports:


These articles give a sense of what the game meant at the time it was played, and shows that the game really did have an immediate impact on how football and the NFL were perceived by fans who had just seen the game.

As Tex Maule says in his article, it "was a truly epic game which inflamed the imagination of a national audience."

The NFL's popularity along with Sports Illustrated's coverage of the game would explode in the decade to come.

The Fleer Sticker Project Turns 1 !

I can't believe its been a year to the day since I started off the blog with a post on the 1960 Fleer Baseball Decals back on December 12 last year:


If you would have told me before I started this venture last year that I'd do 145 posts over the course of a year's time and would have over 37,500 visits to the site over the last 7 months once I figured out how to add a counter, I would never have believed it.

I got the idea for the blog in the fall of last year after discovering the growing number of baseball card blogs including Ben Henry's The Baseball Card Blog, dayf's Cardboard Junkie, and Steve's White Sox Cards. Paul Lukas' UniWatch and Rob's Aquaman Shrine also provided a lot of inspiration.

As I had been spending a lot of time communicating with other collectors on a number of different Fleer sticker sets, the idea started to take shape of putting together an online database of information on these various sets and the variations so that I could share what I had found out about these different sets as well as get feedback from other collectors.

Seeing blogs where people posted pictures of their cards and commented on them gave me the idea of doing the same thing for what I wanted to do with cataloging the Fleer sets.

The results have turned out much better than I could have ever hoped. I've met a number of great people that I never would have come into contact with had it not been for the blog, and the response to the blog in terms of the number of people visiting the site each day amazes me.

I'd like to take a few minutes to look back on some highlights from the 1st year:

January: My first look back at NFL merchandise from vintage Sears and JC Penney's catalogs:




I've gotten a great response to this post as a number of other sites linked to it at the time.

February: The review of the 1969 - 1971 Fleer Quiz Cards.

These sets were one of the reasons I wanted to do the blog as this 3 year series is full of variations that I've never seen documented before.

March & April: Fleer Baseball Cloth Patch Month(s):


This series of Cloth Patches issued over a 7 year period from 1969 to 1975 was the second topic that I really wanted to spend a lot of time trying to cover in depth. Trying to sort out all the variations like this took two months to cover given that I only focused on one team at a time:

I'm pretty sure the blog is the most comprehensive look at this series ever done.

May: Fleer Big Baseball and Big Football Signs:



The most rewarding part of doing these posts was the response I got from Jeff who shared his collection of signs he created for teams that had joined the league after these had been originally issued as well as some custom signs he did that I requested:



July: The blog starts to get noticed!

First, I came across an auction on ebay that lifted my post (word for work) about the 1977 Fleer Baseball Grand Slam Hi-Gloss stickers:


At least he also copied the embedded link in the post to another post of mine so I'll take it as free advertising!

Later in the month, an article on ESPN the Magazine's site linked to my ode to Lowell Palmer as the Coolest Baseball Card of All Time:


If you believe the people who left comments on my post about Lowell, it appears that he was quite the ladies man as a few people left some notes about having dated Lowell during his playing days.

September, October & November: Fleer NFL Football Cloth Patches Month(s):


Just as I had done with the Baseball patches, I undertook a team by team review of all the different Football cloth patch variations in the 1972 to 1976 Fleer NFL Football Cloth Patches like these:



I had a tremendous amount of help from Craig in putting this together as he shared many pictures from his collection.

December: Taking a break from Fleer items for a bit, I covered the various Sunbeam Bread NFL issues from the mid '70s:


I'd like to thank Steve from TheCowboysGuide.com for his help with the Sunbeam Bread cloth patches review.


Looking back, its been a great year for the blog as I've had a lot of fun posting every few days and meeting a number of great people that are bloggers themselves, or collectors who find the site and drop me a note.

Before I took the plunge this time last year, I wasn't sure what to expect and whether or not it would be a worthwhile exercise. I'm happy to report that this has turned out to be a great experience that I hope to continue for at least another year or so.

I've still got a lot of Fleer related items to cover for Baseball and Football, and I'm going to try to cover Basketball items at some point as well.


I'll also continue to cover other items from time to time to mix things up and hopefully keep it interesting.

I'd like to say Thanks! to everyone who follows the blog on a regular basis, and to everyone who has added a link to the site on their blog or linked to a specific post that they enjoyed.

And finally, thanks to everyone who takes the time to leave a comment. Its always gratifying to see comments on something you've posted as it shows that your post was interesting enough to warrant someone spending their time to share their thoughts.

One of the things I've found more and more challenging as the year has gone by is to leave comments on other people's blogs due to the large increase in blogs that I enjoy reading. When I first started the blog, there were about 4 or 5 blogs I would regularly read, but that list has grown considerably as you can see by all the blogs that I now link to and try to follow daily. I'm afraid my ability to leave comments has suffered as a result since I don't have enough time to repsond to every interesting post I read.

Not that I'm complaining as I think its great that a number of people have decided to join in the fun and share their perspectives on the card / sports memorabilia hobby. Its just that an unfortunate consequence is that as more and more good blogs are being written, its harder to spend the same amount of time that I used to spend reading each of my favorite blogs.

Hopefully I'll find myself writing a similar year end review this time next year. In the meantime, Thanks for reading!

I Love the 1970's - Collecting At The Grocery Store!

Having just completed the look at the various NFL card and sticker sets issued by Sunbeam Bread in the mid 70's, I started thinking back to those days when I was a kid going grocery shopping with my mom:

Check out all the Baseball Cards and Wacky Packages for sale!

Going grocery shopping actually wasn't too bad as there were a good number of different things you could find to collect at the supermarket back then. Even though Topps was the only game in town in terms of buying packs of sports cards (save for the various Fleer sticker releases I've covered and the Fleer Team Action NFL cards which I'll be covering soon), there were a number of sports related collectibles available at your local supermarket.

Why don't we take a trip to the grocery store and pick up a few things. Lets start in the Bakery since we need to pick up some bread:

Choosing which bread to buy is pretty easy when you've got things like the 1975 Sunbeam Bread Cloth Patches inside:


or 1976 Sunbeam Stand Up Cards:


or 1976 NFL Team Pennant Stickers:


Sunbeam wasn't the only bakery issuing sports collectibles though. Wonder Bread issued Football Cards in their loaves of bread in 1974:


1975:

and 1976:


The cards were manufactured for Wonder Bread by Topps.

The other thing that you could find in packages of Wonder Bread was Wacky Packages (image courtesy of wackypackages.org):
The folks at Wonder Bread obviously could take a joke, and rather than issuing cease and desist letters like some other companies did when their product was the subject of a Wacky sticker, they realized that kids were crazy for Wackys and could drive sales by getting kids (like me!) to bug their mom to buy Wonder Bread. I remember actually wanting to go shopping with mom and checking out each loaf of bread trying to see which sticker was inside.

I guess we'll need to buy both Sunbeam and Wonder on this trip.

The last items we need to pick up in the bakery section are Hostess Twinkies, Ho-Hos, Big Wheels, King Dons, and Cup-Cakes! As a kid, does it really get any better than having your favorite snack food also have Baseball cards on the box?


Hostess issued annual sets of baseball cards from 1975 to 1979 on the backs of their snack products. Each year there was a 150 card set, which was comprised of 50 3 card panels. Each week during the summer I'd tag along to the grocery and head straight to the bakery section and check the bottom of each box looking for Orioles cards. Of course back then I didn't realize you shouldn't cut the cards out individually but should try to keep the cards together on the panel. Oh well, live and learn.

Since we're running low on breakfast food, lets head over to the cereal isle. Time to pick up some Kellogg's Frosted Flakes:

Tony says sugar coated cereal and baseball cards are a GREAT combination!

Kellogg's issued 3D baseball cards from 1970 through 1983, and issued 3D football cards as well in 1970 and 1971.

Fortunately, most years Kellogg's offered the option of sending money and some box tops to get the whole set so mom was spared having to buy a few hundred boxes of cereal to get a complete set.

Since we need something to drink to wash down the Twinkies and Ho Hos, lets pick up some RC Cola in these collectible cans:






RC Cola did a number of promotions with baseball, football, and basketball players in the later half of the 70's. I'd spend my time going through 6 packs trying to find the 6 pack of cans with the best combination of players.

We need to pick up some Pepsi too, since they've got these baseball cards:


Since not everyone likes cola, lets also get some Canada Dry Ginger Ale with the NFL Football Helmet cans:



I loved this set as a kid, and drank a ton of Canada Dry Ginger Ale trying to get the complete set of cans. I displayed the cans on a shelf in my room, and had them arranged by conference and division. The set came out in 1976 as it had the expansion Seahawks and Buccaneers included in the set.

Unfortunately these Gatorade caps came in the early '70s with is a little before I started collecting, but this was an awesome collectible with NFL helmets on the caps of Gatorade bottles:


Now that we've got some food and drinks, lets take the cart to the checkout.

Hey, check this out....they've got Grocery Trays:






Back in the days before Bonus Boxes and Blasters at Target and Walmart, you could buy cards at the grocery store. The cards were sold in cardboard trays that held 3 packs of cards, which earned them the nickname "grocery trays". Just like stores do with gum and candy, they would usually have these right at the checkout area in the prime position to be an impulse buy for kids who wouldn't quit bugging their mom until they bought one (not that I ever did that :) )

On the way out of the store carrying all of my collectible loot, I would usually ask "Mom, can I have a quarter" - since I wanted to get a football helmet out of the gumball machine:


Maybe its just the stores in our area, but I never see gumball helmets for sale in any of the vending machines where I live.

There were a number of similar collectible premiums available in the 80s and 90's in the grocery store as well, but for me the sets of the 70's are the ones I remember the best given the age I was at the time.

Sets like the ones I've just covered were great as they gave collectors some other things to collect once we finished up our Topps sets each year and made a trip to the grocery store a good excuse to work on your collection. Thanks for all those trips to the grocery store Mom!