A Sunday Afternoon Football Card
November 28th, 2010 by slangon
Last week, I was talking about how I thought it was strange that after just one loss to the Cowboys, the Giants went from being the cream of the NFC to being a team on the brink. Well, after another sad loss to the Eagles, it seems they really are a team on the brink. Maybe they can channel the spirit of todays card to help them get through Jacksonville, although now they have to do it without their number 1 and number 2 receivers.
1959 Topps #160 Mel Triplett
As you can see, this card suffers from the same weird miscut as the Dave Hanner card I showed last Sunday. As a matter of fact, when you stack them up one on top of the other, it is exactly the same. I got it from the same seller that I got the Hanner card from, too, which I think is especially weird that 2 cards with the same exact strange miscut would end up in the hands of one person, and then a completely different person would happen to buy both cards from that person. Spooky.
I also had written a post a while back talking about how Topps had the tendency to recycle elements from their football designs and use them in baseball designs, and vice-versa. This particular ’59 football set saw action the following year as part of the 1960 baseball set, as one of my favorite subsets from that year, the managers.
It also seems that the 1960 managers design was further recycled into the 1965 Topps baseball design. The circle of life.
Mel Triplett played for the Giants from 1955 through 1960. He scored the opening touchdown against the Chicago Bears in the 1956 championship game, won by the Giants 47-7. This game was the second championship game that the Giants won by opting to wear sneakers due to the icy conditions on the field. Mel was named the outstanding offensive player of that game.
One rather strange thing about this card is that even though Mel Triplett had player 4 seasons for the Giants by the time this card came out, it’s considered his rookie card. I guess Topps just never made a card for him in any of the earlier sets.
Also, according to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s memior, Giant Steps, he decided to wear #33 largely because of Mel Triplett.
Back in the day the term Rookie card was more easily defined and was almost universally the very first card a player appeared on as an individual. Even if the player was a 10 year veteran who was about to retire if they never appeared on a card the first one they had would be their “Rookie” Card. They may have appeared on the team photo card, or in the background of another players card but their rookie card was their first single card.
When I saw your two miscut cards, I assumed that they were from the same sheet, and that the whole sheet got screwed up. Then I realized that the Hanner is from the 1st series and the Triplett is from the 2nd, so they had to be printed on different sheets.
I hadn’t noticed the similarity between the names on the 1959 football and 1960 baseball managers cards–thanks for pointing that out.