In an attempt to increase the size of my very small football card
collection, I'm picking up and featuring one new card for each of the
Patriots' 16 regular season games this year.
Week 4 action sees New England traveling to Buffalo to take on the Bills, and I've fittingly picked up a Bills card to commemorate the occasion. From the 1960 Fleer set, here's halfback Willie Evans...
I picked this one out because my limited interest in football cards is primarily with vintage, but I have to say in retrospect that 1960 Fleer is one of the duller designs I've encountered to date. I get that the green element containing the player name and position is supposed to represent a small field (see the goal-posts at the back, over Willie's right ankle?). To me though, it ends up looking just like a white card with two large color splotches and a cropped photo super-imposed over the top. Topps had a much better design in 1960 in my opinion, but you can judge for yourself when I feature one later this season.
As for the player, Willie Evans may not be a household name among today's NFL fans, but I"m betting he's still well-known in Buffalo. Born and raised there, he moved onto a 30+ year teaching career in the city after hanging up the spikes. He's spend his entire life in Buffalo, before passing away at age 79 back in 2017. I didn't know any of this when I picked this card out, but it makes me feel like this was a great pick-up for this project.
I was a little harsh in my critique of the design on the front of the card, but the back isn't so bad. The color scheme reminds me of one of my absolute favorite sets ever, 1953 Topps. I like the card numbering element of the football spinning through the uprights as well, pretty creative. This is much easier on the eyes than a lot of modern card backs I've come across.
That's all for this week. I feel like I'm saying this every week, but this sure has been a fun experiment one quarter of the way through the season here. I'm actually really looking forward to featuring another dozen pieces of football cardboard here before the season's end.
Thanks as always for stopping by, and enjoy the NFL action today football fans!
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2 comments:
Being the first AFL set counts for something as well... but you're right, the back is a lot better than the front. Nice card to have as part of a Football collection, anyway.
That's pretty cool. I wonder how many of his students owned a copy of this card or any of his cards... and if they ever brought it in and asked their teacher for an autograph.
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