Happy 80th birthday to Mike Strofolino! Strofolino played linebacker for the Baltimore Colts and Los Angeles Rams in 1965, and for the St. Louis Cardinals from 1966 to 1968. He then moved to Canada and played two seasons for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.
To my knowledge, Strofolino never appeared on an NFL football card, but he did have a card in the 1970 O-Pee-Chee CFL set. It’s a fun card; I’ve always loved the Tiger-Cats’ striped sleeves!
The 1970 O-Pee-Chee set contains 115 cards, an unusual number for a set of standard-size cards. Set sizes at the time were usually divisible by eleven, because there were eleven cards per row on the uncut sheet. Rows were then repeated as needed to fill a 264-card full sheet.
Strangely, the 1970 O-Pee-Chee set contains 110 player cards, a number that is divisible by eleven. But then O-Pee-Chee added cards 111-115, text-only cards that contain odd info such as an explanation of the jersey numbering system. I can’t imagine why they added these cards, which seem like just filler to me. Maybe they were shooting for a 132-card set–which would fill a half sheet–but then gave up?
For a 115-card set, 34 cards must have been printed three times on the full sheet, with the remaining 81 were printed twice: (34 x 3) + (81 x 2) = 264. There is no mention in the price guides of some 1970 OPC cards being more plentiful than others, but the set doesn’t appear to be heavily collected, so maybe nobody’s noticed.
You can see the full set of 1970 O-Pee-Chee CFL cards in the Gallery.
Are you collecting all of the sets that you feature in these posts?
No, most of them are cards I’ve sold.