Heya, card blog homies! Here is the first binder page from my glorious afternoon at the flea market:
1987 Clemens All-Star, 1987 Bo Jackson, ???? Daryle Lamonica, 1983 topps George Brett, 1983 topps Joe Montana (Record Breaker), 1970 topps Bob Brown, Jackie Smith, 1968 topps John Hadl, 1970 topps Ben Davidson
Why purchased: Very early career Montana (close as I’ll likely get to his rookie anytime soon); Hall of Famer (Jackie Smith); Daryle Lamonica card I have no idea about; Vintage!
Keepers: Just Montana for the time being. The rest are available.
Notes: I actually already own the Bo and George Brett, both pulled from packs myself, but they are cool cards either way.
It appears Bob Brown is also a Hall of Famer as well. Very cool. 🙂
All the non-Hall of Fame football players on the page (Davidson, Hadl, Lamonica) made First Team All-Pro at least once (Lamonica twice), and have 14 Pro Bowl selections between them. Oddly, Hadl and his loonytunes stats has the most Pro Bowls with six.
Seriously, I have no idea what the Lamonica card is supposed to be. The back is very similar looking to the Deckle Edge baseball cards, so I assume it is from the late-’60s as well, but I dunno. Also, it is beat to hell. None of the vintage I picked up was in perfect condition, but very few were that bad.
All the binder pics were taken by my ridiculously expensive webcam. They didn’t come out perfectly, but pretty nice for any webcam at 800×600, methinks. Also, I haven’t tinkered with any settings, so it may yet be able to be further improved.
Mind-Blowing Statistics: John Hadl had 33503 career passing yards, but only completed 50.4% of his passes and had more interceptions (268) than touchdowns (244). Looking at his stats year-by-year is even crazier. It’s hard to fathom how he was allowed to start long enough to put up such impressive yards and touchdown numbers, while being so… so bad, to put it bluntly. I’d just chalk it up to different eras and less emphasis on statistics in the past, but it’s pretty hard to ignore those numbers.
Jackie Smith’s best year was in 1967, when he caught 56 passes for 1205 yards, good for 21.5(!) yards-per-catch. He also had receiving 9 touchdowns, more than doubling any other season of his career. But forget about that. He went for 21.5 yards-per-catch. With over 1200 receiving yards. As a tight end. The guys that are specifically paid to be deep threats these days are rarely able to put up numbers like that. He also put up an impressive by any standard 16.5 YPC for his career on nearly 8000 receiving yards.
That’s it for page one. Thanks for stopping by! There’s much more vintage to come, but next time we’ll be making a stop in junk wax country. But it will be a fun (and rookie-laden) trip, I promise.
Until our next…
Life and Baseball Cards 