Thursday, December 29, 2011

Vintage Card of the Month: Amos Alonzo Stagg


The College football bowl season has started and I decided to go with a college legend for this month’s Vintage Card of the Month. The card, Amos Alonzo Stagg from the 1955 Topps All American set.

Stagg played as an End for Yale in the late 1880s (1885-1889) and was selected as a First Team All-American in 1889. The year after his graduation he began his coaching career at Springfield College before moving on to the University of Chicago a few years later, he spent 40 years coaching at Chicago and even won two National Championships there (in 1905 and 1913). While at the University of Chicago he coached one season for the basketball team and he was the baseball coach for almost 20 years.

After he left Chicago he continued coaching until he was 96-years old, at Susquehanna University and the University of Stockton. In his almost 70 years of coaching he revolutionized the game including changes to the offense and defense and is believed to have a “hand” in the creation of the forward pass in 1906 and the creation of the Line Backer position.

As was pretty common at the time, the card is cut off-center as well as being off top-to-bottom also. The top two corners are rounded pretty awful but the bottom two corners are in decent shape, the white border has yellowed a bit and the colors have muted over the years. The picture include of Stagg was from his later career (from his time at the University of Pacific) instead of from his college days.

Most ungraded copies sell in the $25-50 range with graded copies running a bit higher depending on grade.

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