This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 9/15/2017
In 1964, the Philadelphia Gum Company struck a major blow in the football card market when they secured exclusive rights to the National Football League (NFL), leaving rival Topps no choice but to produce a set entirely of players from the American Football League (AFL). While the AFL had some legitimate stars, it was clearly considered a second-rate organization that could never match up to the star power of Bart Starr, Jim Brown or Johnny Unitas, players whose rookie cards were produced by Topps in the 1950s. It was a strange situation for Topps, who was used to coming out on top after having disposed of Bowman and held off challenges from Fleer in the baseball card market, to suddenly be playing second-fiddle to an upstart and virtually unknown competitor. Of course, that lower status was gone as quickly as it came with the creation of the 1965 Topps "tall-boy" series and the introduction of the Joe Namath rookie card, arguably the most important football card ever produced. Just a few short years later, Philadelphia Gum joined the list of victims in Topps' wake. The featured 1965 Topps set is ranked #6 on the PSA Set Registry with an impressive set rating of 7.83. Simply stated, the Joe Namath rookie card joins 24 others at the PSA 7 level while the other 151 cards in this 176-item assemblage are graded PSA 8. Key PSA 8 examples include #35 Kemp, 46 Brown, 69 Blanda, 133 Biletnikoff and 155 Alworth, and four of the NM/MT cards (#19, 84, 146 and 175) are at the highest grade on record. For a complete breakdown of this set with grades and PSA populations, please visit our website for a link to the PSA Set Registry.
LINK: 1965 Topps Football #6 Set