As I wrote in my very first blog article, I have been making the 1968 Topps Team Photos cards in the Gallery “interactive,” one card at a time. This week I did the Dallas Cowboys card. If you go to the Gallery’s page for the card, you can run your cursor over the card image to see who each of the players is. Around 10 of the players never appeared on cards of their own.
The Cowboys card is one of only two in this set that pictures only players, not coaches or other staff. (The other is the San Francisco 49ers card.) It’s also strange in that the background of the original photo has been airbrushed off, so the group of players appears to be floating in space. At first I thought the coaches had been airbrushed off, but they don’t appear on the original photo, either.
Like all of the cards in the Team Photos set, this one pictures the team from the year prior, 1967. The 1967 Cowboys finished atop the NFL’s Capitol Division, beat the Cleveland Browns in the divisional round of the playoffs, and lost to the Green Bay Packers in the “Ice Bowl.” The 1968 Cowboys went 12-2 and lost to the Browns in the divisional round.
The Team Photos cards are tough to find, especially in top condition. First, not many of them made it into circulation–possibly because of a licensing issue–and second, most of the cards–from my observation, anyway–have wax on the back. They’re also “tall boys,” like 1965 Topps football cards, and their larger size made them more apt to get their corners dinged.
For all of the Gallery’s “interactive” team cards, visit this page.
