Vintage Card Of The Month: 1950 Topps Felt Back Charles Hall

This month’s VCoM comes from the 1950 Topps Felt Back series. I have been wanting to pick up a Felt Back since I returned to collecting in 1992 but I always ended up skipped buying a Felt Back to purchase another card but with my commitment to buying only what I want to collect I made it a priority to get one this year.

The top card in the set is the Joe Paterno card, which can demand up to $2,000-2,500, but I was focused on the Charles Hall card because he is University of Arizona alumni. This is a beautiful addition to my U of A collection.

The 1950 Topps Felt Backs are quite cool, the cards are college cards and they were made in Red, Blue, Yellow and Green depending on the school’s colors. The front of the card contained a close up shot of the player and was on typical cardboard while the back of the cards was felt (hence the “Felt Backs” name) and contained the schools pendent. The player’s position also included an adjective to describe the player, players who were team captains or co-captains stated that but other players had interesting sayings. Hall’s card says “Crack Fullback”, Bill Gregus’ says “Galloping Halfback” and Bernie Kreuger’s says “Brilliant Quarterback”.

The downside with these cards are that they are very condition sensitive. Many cards were cut seriously off-center plus the backs can shed the felt. These cards are small, very small. We are talking stamp sized. Here is a picture of the Charles Hall card next to a Gypsy Queen mini for comparison.