Trading Card Challenge - My Favorite Football Card

Time for post number three in response to Cardpocalypse's 7 Day Trading Card Challenge.  For this post we were asked to select our favorite football card from our collections.  As with the second post, this one is going to be a challenge for me, as I just plain don't own many football cards.

A couple of years ago in fact I would have passed on this completely with an "I don't collect the sport" excuse.  These days I'm more in the camp of "I don't seek out football cards often, but I have a small handful that I really do enjoy".

Of the 30,000+ cards in my organized and inventoried collection on The Trading Card Database, I have just 57 total football cards as of the time of this post.  Ironically, my best football card by a long shot is tied up in a time capsule for the next few years, so let's see some of the others that are eligible for the challenge instead...

For a long while I probably would've gone with this Rob Gronkowski RC in response to this question.  I plucked this off of COMC back in 2014 for just 55 cents if you can believe that.  These days it's probably around a $10 card.  It sure was fun watching Gronk mow down defenders for many years, and I'll always treasure this card because of that.  It's not the card I'm going with for the challenge, but is probably a close second place.

Aside from that Gronk, until the past year or so the other highlights in my small football collection were pick-ups that occurred simply because I like shiny cards, like this Bowman Chrome Bubbles Refractor...

...or this absolutely stunning Atomic Refractor of Randy Moss.  Is there a more attractive shiny card out there than the early 2010s Topps Atomic Refractors?  I really don't think so.  I really regret not buying a Tom Brady from this set before the well dried up.

This one is also kind of cool, since it features a signed ticket stub from one of the Patriots Super Bowl championships.  This was an impulse grab out of a $5 bin at a card show many, many years ago.

Those were pretty much the highlights of my football card collection until this past season, but none of them fit the bill.

This past year I decided to experiment with picking up a few more football cards, and challenged myself to purchase and post about one card for each of the Patriots' 16 regular-season games.  I ended up with some really great vintage football cards as a result, like this 1951 Bowman Eddie Saenz. 

This one is particularly cool in that it will always remind me of the trip we took last fall to see the Patriots play the Redskins on the road in Maryland.  A great road trip, with good food and friends, and a Patriots victory.  Followed that up with a week in DC seeing the sights and eating the foods, and it was an amazing ten-day stretch for sure.  Like the Gronk RC, this one was pretty high up there when I was whittling this list down just because of the connection to those memories.

I've come to appreciate football cards enough that, while I'll never collect them anywhere near the level that I do baseball, hockey, or even soccer, I do occasionally check COMC for unique and cheap pick-ups.  That's how I stumbled across this awesome "Biggie" Munn for just $1.50 last year.  A cool card, but not my favorite.

I love the 1960s/early 1970s "tallboy" releases from Topps, and that includes football.  Someday I'd love to own a copy of the iconic Joe Namath card from this set, but spending four figures on a football card is way down my priority list and may never happen.  I'd grab a '53 Mays or Mantle before the Namath with that kind of money to spend.  I've got three commons from the tallboy football set though, and they're pretty great.  Not great enough to be my favorite football card.

That honor goes to a card I pulled in the only football repack I've ever purchased, strangely enough...

Yes, this Barry Sanders' Topps rookie card is my favorite football card!  I pulled this back in 2011, and even though it's worth just a few bucks it's my favorite football card so far.  Being a child of the late '80s/early '90s I recall what a force Sanders was, even though I wasn't even a big football fan at the time.  Still one of the great backs of all-time, and certainly one of the most fun backs to watch of all-time!

So there you have it, a little out of my wheelhouse for sure, but that's what accounts for the challenge portion of the 7 Day Trading Card Challenge I suppose.  The next post in this series will have a similar vibe, as I actually have less basketball cards than I do football even!

Until then, thanks as always for stopping by...