Vintage Card Of The Month: 1977 Topps Steve Largent

This month’s Vintage Card of the Month is from the 1977 Topps Football set, Steve Largent. The 1977 Topps football release was the first set to include both of the 1976 expansion teams, the Seattle Seahawks and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. This card is Largent’s rookie card, remember the days when a player had only one rookie card?

 

Last month I selected a Largent relic card for my vintage card so this selection should be no surprise. Steve Largent is my favorite Seahawk and is among the Seahawks pantheon of gods along with Dave Krieg, Walter Jones, Curt Warner, Shaun Alexander, Matt Hasselbeck, Cortez Kennedy and Mack Strong.

 

Topps was the only major football card company at the time and they had a pretty standard design in the mid-late 70s; a white border, close-up shot of the player, a banner of some sort with the team name and the player’s name. If you look at the base cards from 1975 through the 1983 sets you will see there were only minor changes from year to year.

 

The card is in good shape and besides a smudge on the front (above the “E” in Largent) and cut slightly off center on the front it looks great. I picked up the card about 10 years ago on eBay for less than $8 shipped so a pretty good bargain.

Is Jeff Demps Worth A Contract?

Former Florida Gator’s running back Jeff Demps is looking to sign on with an NFL team, and has even seen some interest from the Buccaneers and Eagles. His stats at Florida, while not mind blowing, are reasonable. He averaged 617 rushing yards plus another 120 yards receiving a year and he did time at Punt Returner and Kick Returner. He may be undersized at 5’7” and 190 lbs. but I have two words for you (No… not “Suck It!”… Damn I miss DX sometimes) but I was thinking more along the lines of Percy Harvin. Yes, Harvin has a couple of inches on Demps but you get the idea of how he could fit in to a coach’s plan.

What I find surprising is how there are quite a few reporters and analysts that are calling this a joke. Sure he has taken time off to work on his Olympic training, where he helped win the Silver medal in the 4x100 relay in London, and he missed out being drafted because he stated that he planned on focusing on track leading up to the Olympics but claiming his training would stunt his football skills is just ludacris. There have been a number of Olympiads who went on to play in the NFL successfully. Michael Bates, an old elementary school friend from Tucson (Go Cragin Cougars!), was drafted by the Seahawks in 1992 but took off the summer for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics where he won the Bronze in the 200 yard dash and while I would not say he had a great career he had a successful career as a kick returner, he played 10 years (6 teams) and was a Pro Bowler 5 times, made the All-Pro Team 5 times and was selected to the 1990s All-Decade team.

I think that Demps may have a similar path to Bates, he is close in size (5-7 to 5-10 and 190-215) so I would expect to see him probably come in as a kick/punt returner mainly and possibly lining up as a receiver or slot back on occasion. I do not see why a team would have a problem with brining him in now, sign him and give him a chance. He can be signed for the rookie minimum and what is the worst that can happen? If he stinks cut him loose during the roster cuts and if he succeeds you have a player worth his salary (something that seems very rare in the NFL today).

UPDATE 8/17: Jeff Demps is rumored to be signing a contract with the Patriots later today, if there is one coach who will know how to work Demps in to the game plan it is Belicheck.

Early Preview: ITG The History Of Hockey

In The Game is known for their hockey sets, unfortunately they do not have an NHL license, but that has never stopped them from putting out some quality releases. The newest product on the horizon is the History of Hockey release. So far no release date or price information has been announced. The product will be limited to 4,000 total packs.

Each pack/box will contain 4 cards: 1 Greatest Moments in Hockey, 1 Rookie card, 1 Autograph card and 1 Buy-Back card. The Greatest Moment cards are all hand painted original-art cards created for the set while the other 3 subsets are buy-back cards and encased as part of this set. The cards will include labels that are color coded to distinguish each category, the Greatest Moments have a silver label, the Rookie cards have a gold label, the Autographs have a white PSA/DNA label and the Buy-Backs have a green label.

Greatest Moments in Hockey:

This 145-card set will include some of the greatest moments in hockey like Wayne Gretzky’s 802^nd goal, the 1980 US Miracle on Ice and Martin Brodeur’s All-Time Wins Record. Each card in the set is hand-painted and limited, the first 60 cards in the checklist will be limited to #/10 (1 Gold version and 9 Silvers) and the remaining 85 will be limited to #/40 (10 Gold versions and 30 Silver versions).

Jared Kelly and Mike James both have artwork included in the set. The preview image that ITG released of Bobby Orr’s flying goal is one of the two cards that Jared has included in the Greatest Moments checklist. Jared included a "Before" image of the Orr card on his website showing what the card looked like before the relic was added.

Rookie cards:

ITG went out and found rookie cards of some of the greatest players ever, which they encased to protect, and included one in each pack. There are some amazing pulls here including:

1911 C55 Georges Vezina
1951-52 Parkhurst Rocket Richard
51-52 Parkie Gordie Howe
66-67 Topps Bobby Orr
2005-06 Upper Deck Young Guns Sidney Crosby

Autograph cards:

ITG bought a number of cards from various players (not sure if they purchased them already signed or had the players sign them) and then had the autographs authenticated and encased by PSA/DNA.

Buy-Backs:

ITG went out and bought 4,000 cards dating back to when they opened their doors in 1998, half of the 4,000 cards are autographs and the other half are memorabilia cards. The cards were encased and marked as part of the History of Hockey set.

Personally I would probably end up busting some of these cards out of their cases, I know that they protect the cards but if I have pull the 1911 C55 Vezina card I would have to consider selling it, which would probably sell better being graded. Most of the rookie cards would fall in to this category for me.

2011 Topps Magic Football- Worth It? Yes or No?

Next week (1/25/12) Topps will be releasing the 2011 Magic Football set and there will be some changes from the 2010 release. First this will be a rookie only release and second the product will only be sold through Topps’ online store. Each $19.99 box contains 10 rookie base cards and 1 rookie autograph. According to a Topps rep the shipping will be $8-12 (WTF?) depending on shipping preferences and location.

The set contains 100 base cards and 10 short print parallels for a 110-card base checklist plus 68 autographs. There are also 68 Black Magic Autograph parallels (Black bordered and #1/1) and 8 Black Magic Cut Signatures (Silver inked cut-signatures).

The Topps Magic Football set has changed over the years, 2009 was an NCAA product and 2010 was an NFL product but the most obvious change has been this year’s product. These base cards use some awfully bright colors, bordering on fluorescent in some case, and to counter that the autographed parallels are muted in color. I have to admit, besides the colors I do like the design but I am disappointed that Topps is shutting down the card shops/online retailers and requiring buyers to go through them and their insane shipping costs.

Cam Newton Base

Cam Newton Base SP

Cam Newton Bae Auto parallel

Cam Newton Black Magic Cut Signature

Mark Ingram Base SP

Mark Ingram Base Auto parallel

Mark Ingram Black Magic Cut Signature



Doug Baldwin Base

Ryan Williams Base