A Football Card Experiment - Game 2 - Squish the Fish!

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.

Earlier today, the Pats annihilated their week 2 opponent, the Miami Dolphins.  To commemorate the occasion I've got...you guessed it...a Dolphins card...

...and a fantastic Dolphins card at that!  When I conceived the idea for this small project and began looking around at vintage football cards, it didn't take me very long to settle on Garo Yepremian's rookie card.

There are so many things for me to like about this card.  I'd never heard of Garo, who was born in Cyprus, before.  He doesn't seem like a likely NFL football player to me, between the diminutive stature (5' 7") and male pattern baldness.  Nonetheless, he was the team's kicker for their perfect season in 1972, which is pretty cool.

As the back of the card indicates, he'd never even seen an American football game before suiting up for his very first one with the Detroit Lions in 1966! 

I really love the design for the back of the cards in this 1971 flagship set.  Topps fit a whole lot of information on here, including a small cartoon, and did it in such a way that it's very easy on the eyes and visually appealing.

The front isn't bad either, the cartoon element in the lower corner is perfectly '70s.  You don't see a lot of sets where red is the dominating color either.  2008 Topps Opening Day baseball comes to mind, but there aren't many.  All of the other pluses aside, you can't really go wrong with a card that features a couple of trees and wood-paneled station wagon!

This is proving to be a fun experiment a couple of weeks into the season so far; I'm pleased to welcome Garo to my collection!  Thanks as always for stopping by, and enjoy what's left of your Sunday evening!