Last is first

I received not one, but two boxes of cards in the mail today.  The one that I was expecting was from Kin, or to many of you @beansbcardblog on Twitter.  There was a boatload of great stuff inside, but there was one card that I grabbed during his stack sale a couple weeks back that sparked this one card post.

I was instantly attracted to this card as its a checklist that's marked up, but marked up fairly neatly.

1966 Topps football #132 for your consideration.

OK.  Lots of things to notice on the card.  Creases.  For some reason I'm not minding them on this card.  To each his own right?

Whomever marked the boxes didn't have Len Dawson yet.  Shucks.

The wood grain border.  Boy did Topps do a few sets with this type of border.  Had no idea of any football sets that did this.  So had to do a bit of searching to find out a bit more information.

Back is in really decent shape, boxes colored in reasonably well.  But then I start to look a little closer.

Chiefs on the front, Dolphins, Jets, Raiders, Chargers on the back.  All AFL teams!  So I look up the set on TCDB and find that the other teams in the set (Patriots, Bills, Broncos and Oilers) comprise the rest of the AFL.  

Remember I know next to nothing about vintage football cards, so this was kind of a cool discovery for me.  The only other set in 1966 was Philadelphia, and sure enough that set featured all the NFL teams on it.  

I decided to hit eBay and see how much the Joe Namath card was going for, as I know it's one of his earlier releases ('65 Topps is his RC), and I was surprised to find raw copies on eBay between $70-200.  Not a surprising range considering the varying card conditions, but I thought the prices might be a bit higher.  

Maybe....one day.....the '66 Topps FB set will get added to the list of stuff to work on.  What would make me even consider putting it together is it's a reasonable 132 card set.  I accidently have bought the last one first.  But for now I consider it a cool find for the sport that is a distant 3rd on my collecting radar.

Enjoy the hobby!!

Robert