Today’s vintage football card of the day is a 1963 Topps card of Ed Brown. This is the toughest card in the 1963 Topps set to find in high grades. According to PSA’s population report, only seven examples of the card have been graded PSA 8, and none have been graded higher.
Why is the Brown card so tough? First, it is one of the short prints in the 1963 Topps set: the Pittsburgh Steelers were one of six teams whose cards were printed just once on the uncut sheet. The cards of the players from the rest of the teams were printed twice. Second, the quarterbacks for each team were printed on the left edge of the sheet, and cards on the edges of the sheets tended to be damaged more in production. You can where Brown’s card was positioned on the sheet on the Gallery’s 1963 Topps virtual uncut sheet page.
