Checklist city

I was able to complete a trade in the past week with one of the biggest traders on the TCDB site, Craig (Known as Dukey Devil).  It was a 70 for 70 football trade, which is probably the biggest football trade I'll pull off ever on the site.

It was split up nice, 13 1971 Topps cards, and the remaining 57 were 1977 Topps.  The one group of cards that I noticed right away were the checklists from the '77 set.

The thing you spot immediately is the more popular teams in the set.  No surprise on this group of 6 that the Packers, Bears and Cowboys feature quite a few players more than the Oilers, Broncos and Chiefs.  The Bears alone have 23 cards in the set.  Another thing I spotted is how beautiful the checklists look, there is not a mark on any of them at all.  That is going to spoil me for finding spotless checklists for the remainder.

I was a bit surprised at how many Cardinals were in the set ( I counted 22 ), as they were in an era where the team had a few talented players, but weren't winning titles.  The '76 football Cardinals went 10-4 and still only finished 3rd in the NFC east behind the Cowboys (11-3) and the Redskins (10-4).  I also learned a little something while writing this post, Don Coryell, he of the Air Coryell teams in San Diego, coached the Cardinals for 5 years (3 straight double digit win seasons) before moving on to the west coast.

I also remembered that 1977 was the Buccaneers first season in the NFL.  Had to have been tough, they were shut out in their first 2 games, only kicked 3 FG's in their 3rd game, and didn't score the first touchdown in team history until the 4th quarter of the 4th game, and it was a defensive TD to boot!  (44 yard fumble return)  Oh and they didn't win a game in '77 going 0-14.  Ouch

I'm sure unlike the 60's sets I've featured lately on the blog, a lot of these checklists should have recognizable names and bring back some football memories for sure.

Robert