Today’s card of the day is the Green Bay Packers 1968 Topps Team Photos card. Yesterday I made the card interactive, meaning that on its Gallery page, you can move your cursor over the card to see who each player is. Give it a try!
The card pictures the 1967 Packers team, which won the NFL title for the third straight year, then beat the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl II. I noticed just yesterday that this team photo is unusual–and maybe unique–because it includes the trainers and equipment managers, but not the coaches or executives. I wonder how that decision came about?
One reason I like identifying the players on team cards is that, almost always, some of the players in the photo never appeared on cards of their own. Typically, those players played professionally for only a short time, so the card companies never got around to putting them on a card. It’s nice to give the overlooked players a bit of recognition, and to inform their fans–often relatives or friends–that there is a card they can collect.
Usually, when making one of these interactive cards, I find a player who is a surprise. The surprise this time was Ben Wilson. I was familiar with Wilson from his 1965 Philadelphia card with the Los Angeles Rams, but I didn’t know he had played for the Packers. He had a good year in 1967: 541 yards from scrimmage and a Super Bowl ring!
For more interactive team cards, see–you guessed it–the Gallery’s Interactive Team Cards page.
