And now, for the perfect attendance awards...

Recently, I looked up who had cards in the 9-year period from 1964 to 1972, and how many cards each player had in that time span. I chose those years because they are my primary years of interest (well, not the AFL from 1964-66, but I included them anyway to get the complete picture). 

 

This research was an extension of my finding out who had a 1969 card but no other cards from 1966-72, as they will be the topics for my new 1969 card blog.

 

I counted base cards only, and not anyone’s appearance on team cards, “play” cards, or the in-action, All-Pro, and league leader subsets found in the 1972 set. Also, there are two 2-player cards in the 1966 NFL set, so I counted them twice.

 

A total of 997 players were found.  (As a side note, there were 2 Gene Washingtons (already knew that), a John and Johnny Baker, and a John and Johnny Robinson.)

 

12 players had a card in all 9 years. Predictably, most of them (8) were quarterbacks. Although only 8 to 10 players per team were featured in the sets prior to 1973, a team’s starting quarterback was almost guaranteed to appear every season, unless he missed the previous year due to injury (no Bills' QB in '69), or the incumbent was either traded (no Steelers' QB in '68, nor Eagles in '71) or retired. 

 

Another 15 players had 8 cards in those 9 years, usually because they were not active at the start or end of the period, but sometimes because Topps or Philly Gum rotated them out of the set. 

 

What surprised me the most was the difference in total players per year. In ’64 and ’65, there were 334 and 341 players respectively. That dropped to 295 and 290 for the next 2 years. The 1968 set is REALLY small – only 217 players. Topps did a bad job on their first set having both the NFL and AFL players. (Not really surprising, given how shoddy their 1968 baseball set was.) 

 

An enterprising custom card creator out there could add 45 or so players to bring the 1968 total up into the 260’s (the number of players in the 1969 to 1972 sets). Looking at the chart below, I found that many stars were missing 1968 cards, but had cards for most years before and after. Here’s 30 to get you started: 

 

Gerry Philbin, Jim Otto, Merlin Olsen, Dave Parks, Deacon Jones, Earl Morrall, Mick Tingelhoff, Willie Wood, Bruce Gossett, Charley Johnson, Dave Costa, Dick LeBeau, Houston Antwine, Johnny Robinson, Otis Taylor, Steve DeLong, Ben Davidson, Billy Shaw, Bob Brown, Bob Vogel, Chuck Allen, Chuck Howley, Dave Wilcox, Dick Schafrath, Fred Arbanas, Jim Marshall, Mike Clark, Larry Grantham, Mike Pyle, Pat Fischer.

 

 

Here's everyone with 5 or more cards in those 9 years:

Oakland Raiders - Custom Extension Set

Here are the 1967 Oakland Raiders cards made by RetroCards.net, the companion set to the original Topps cards. 

 

These look much better than the Chiefs' cards I posted last week. 

 

 

As usual, there's no room within Blogger's 200-character limit for labels to include everybody. 

 

Next? RetroCards also made a 1967 set for the Bears. If and when I buy that, I will post them here. That's the last of the 1967 cards.

Kansas City Chiefs - Custom Extension Set

This is the fourth of five 1967 team sets I bought from RetroCards.net. Previously, I posted the Cowboys, Packers, and Saints sets.  Those are all great-looking cards.  

I can't say the same for these Chiefs cards.  Almost every photo is too dark - some so dark as to either not be able to make out the player's face, or that the jersey is red.  It doesn't help that the borders are also black (Topps' original color for the Chiefs' cards). 

On the plus side, we have 18 more players for the defending AFL champions.  (Notable absences from the combined Topps/RetroCards set are G Ed Budde, K Jan Stenerud, MLB Willie Lanier, T Dave Hill, and DE Chuck Hurson.)

 

"65 Toss Power Trap!"

I also bought the Raiders' set at the same time.  Those cards have much better photo quality.

Next: Oakland Raiders

New Orleans Saints - Custom Extension Set

After the disaster that was the 1967 Philly Gum Saints cards, RetroCards could have done just about anything and it would have been an improvement over the originals. 

 

They responded with an 18-card set, featuring everyone in a new Saints jersey. Included in the set are Bill Kilmer, Jim Taylor, Dan Abramowicz, Doug Atkins, and a multi-player card featuring Paul Hornung and Jim Taylor, among others. 

 

Gary Cuozzo started most of the games in 1967.  Bill Kilmer was the regular QB from 1968-70, then was traded to the Redskins. (In 1971, 2nd-overall pick Archie Manning took over.)

7 receivers! (WRs Hall, Roberts, Abramowicz, Gilliam, Poage, and Simmons, plus TE Kramer.)

Steve Stonebreaker has a Jim Taylor haircut! 

 

In my recent post about the custom Cowboys cards, I showed a card back. While the backs of all the custom Cowboys cards have referee signals, the backs of the Packers and Saints cards have a montage of custom card photos. (Looks like they are working on a Rams set.)

 

 

Next: Kansas City Chiefs

Green Bay Packers - Custom Extension Set

Continuing with the "Cards That Never Were" sets from RetroCards.net, here are the 1967 Packers. 

 

The original set included mostly defensive players, so there are a lot of offensive players (17 of 20 cards) in this set. 

 

Lots of running backs! (Filling the void of the departed Paul Hornung and Jim Taylor.) 

 

Boyd Dowler and Carroll Dale are both noted as flankers here, but on the back of both cards it says "he could line up at split end too". How versatile of them! 

 

6 offensive linemen (augmenting the 2 starting tackles in the original set).

The original set included CB Herb Adderley and S Willie Wood. Bob Jeter was also a starting cornerback.  Between the two sets, I think the only regulars missing are DE Lionel Aldridge, DT Ron Kostelnik, and S Tom Brown. 

 

(Note: Blogger limits the combined length of all labels to 200 characters, so there was no room to include the backup players.)

 

 

Next: New Orleans Saints