With the news that American Airlines and United Airlines have added Flight 1989 from Kansas City to Las Vegas for the Super Bowl to take advantage of the Taylor Swift - Travis Kelce hysteria surrounding Super Bowl LVIII, it made me think of some of the great United Airlines NFL ads I have come across: Throughout the 1960's and into the 1970's, United Airlines was the official airline of most NFL teams, which they publicized through a number of ads using NFL logos and helmets. The earliest example I have found likely dates from the early 1960s, which shows a collection of team logos on the sid ..read more

I wanted to share a set that I was not aware of until recently.  In 1980, collectors could get NFL helmet stickers when buying a box of Carnation Hot Cocoa Mix: Most of the stickers are blank backed, but a few do have a coupon for a free box of hot cocoa mix.  The coupon has a 1980 copyright ..read more

The 1980 Fleer Baseball Sticker set was much different than the Grand Slam Hi-Gloss sets that had been issued from 1977 - 1979. Whereas the previous sets had 2 stickers per team (not counting the border color variations), the 1980 set had 4 different stickers per team: Each team had 1) a logo sticker against a baseball diamond with the 1979 record information on the top, 2) another logo sticker against a colored background with the 1979 record information, 3) the very familiar cap monogram / team name sticker (the design which dates all the way the the 1969 cloth patches), and 4) a cap sticke ..read more

One set that I was not aware of when I did my original review of Sunbeam's NFL items from the 1970's was the set of helmet stickers from 1977:   The stickers do not mention Sunbeam on the back, but  are produced by A. Harris Assoc Inc in Cherry Hill, NJ which is the same company that produced the 1976 Sunbeam issues, so these small helmet stickers are commonly referred to as 1977 Sunbeam stickers given the copyright on the back. Here are the backs of the 1976 Sunbeam issues: 1976 Sunbeam NFL Stand-Up Football 1976 Sunbeam NFL Football Pennant Stickers I really miss the days whe ..read more

Thanks to Mike from the great Baseball Card Variations Guide Book Vol 2 for alerting me to the fact that there are 2 versions of the California Angels Fleer Baseball Big Sign. One version has the Angels name with a lower case "a" and the other version has an upper case "A", along with a darker shade of red The signs are sometimes referred to as being from 1973 and sometimes from 1974.  Perhaps they were issued in both years.  One clue is that there are different colored boxes that the signs came in, which perhaps indicates that the signs were issued twice: Unfortunately there is ..read more

 As we get ready for the World Series, here are a few fun Astros programs where the Astros played the Phillies from the 1960's: I miss the days when some teams would publish programs that poked a little fun at their opponents, like in this case where they have some fun with Phillies manager Gene Mauch: Not quite sure what is going on here, other than I assume the space capsules refer to their current positions in the standings: I think this sums up the fact that neither team was having a good year and that they were looking forward to the offseason: Even before they became the Astr ..read more

Here is a picture of what I believe to be a 1972 Fleer Baseball Cloth Patches uncut sheet:   The reason I believe it is from 1972 is that there are no Senators or Rangers patches, so this would most likely be from the season when the Washington Senators moved to Texas to become the Rangers:     This sheet comes from the same person who provided a picture of a framed uncut Fleer Baseball Cloth Patches sheet from 1974 which I profiled previously:   I dated that sheet as being from 1974 due to the lack of Padres patches as this would have most likely been from the year that ..read more

If you haven't seen the 1967 Topps promotional video entitled "The Hidden Treasure", you are in for a treat.  Topps posted this on YouTube a few weeks back, and it is an amazing time capsule: This is a fantastic look back at kids collecting baseball cards during 1967 as well as look at the new Topps factory in Durya, PA.   We get to see kids opening packs of 1967 Topps Baseball:     Looks like these are 1967 High Numbers based on the Don Clendenon (# 535)!     We see more high numbers in the packs his sister opened!     We see kids flipping their ..read more

I saw this 1979 Topps Football sell sheet on ebay, and was quite surprised to see the Steelers logo on Terry Bradshaw's helmet. This flyer certainly gives the impression that the 1979 set would include team logos on the helmets based on the picture: Alas, what we actually got was the same old airbrushed helmets that we had to endure for the entire decade as this is what we ended up with: I' I'm guessing that Topps didn't bother to airbrush the sell sheet as that isn't a trading card, and they probably figured the NFL would not bother going after them over a sell sheet. Here is a look at the o ..read more

As we get ready for the most unique season in MLB history, I thought this would be a good time to show a Sporting News cover from 1967 that I recently came across featuring the artwork of Bob Laughlin with his representations for each team at the start of the season:  Here is the full cover from the Feb 25, 1967 issue:   Card collectors will recognize Bob's work from his World Series sets that he initially produced himself in B&W as well as the color World Series and other sets he did for Fleer and other self produced sets in the early to mid-70s: In fact, in his initial a ..read more