We're one more round of NFL games away from the Super Bowl, so what better time than to tell you about an iconic football set - 1981 Topps! Today, we'll teach you about these incredible treasures in our new series: The Set of the Week.
Read to cringe? 1981 = vintage. We know. ..we know. Pause for a moment and do the math, though - 1981 was 45 years ago. Just Collect proudly buys vintage collections, and while football sets such as 1958 Topps with the Jim Brown rookie comes to mind as one of our favorites to purchase, those 1981 Topps cards are now old enough to have a mid-life crisis. 1981 Topps cards are itching to buy a Mustang, dye their hair, and try to bring back MTV. The vintage 1981 Topps set has a KEY card in our hobby, making moves on the most-graded list. Today, we teach you about 1981 Topps football in The Set of the Week.
Topps produced a set totaling 528 cards, each measuring 2.5" x 3.5"x, the standard size today. On the front of each card are pictures of players you watched when you had only a few TV channels. Surrounded by a white border, each card also features a pennant (remember hanging those on your wall?) with the player's team. Below the pennant is the player's position and their name to the right. The famous Topps logo is on the upper-right corner and bleeds into the colored pipeline around the card. On the back of each card is player information, a short writeup, and their stats. Before the Internet, these stats are how we knew the number of touchdowns a QB threw! We couldn't go to Google and search "how many yards did Walter Payton rush for?" - you looked at the back of your cards. You can see Billy Joe DuPree from the Cowboys above as his helmet is up on a sunny day.
Cards were found in those amazing wax packs you would rip open, find that stick of gum, and pull your favorite players. The wax packs had 15 cards inside for about 25 cents. Cello packs came with 27 cards for 49 cents. The rack packs had 48 cards split into three different sections and ran you under a dollar. The grocery packs were similar to rack packs and had 36 cards split into three sections.
Subsets are:
Card #1 in that League Leaders set is Jaws, Ron Jaworski of the Philadelphia Eagles, and Brian Sipe of the Cleveland Browns. I know we told you these cards are vintage; hard to imagine a time when a Browns QB was among league leaders in anything other than losses. Sipe deserved to be on the #1 card, though - he was the 1980 NFL MVP!
Record Breaker cards 333 and 335 belong to Jim Plunkett (335) and Kenny King (333). Plunkett, the QB, broke the record for longest pass completion in Super Bowl History when he passed to Kenny King, the RB, for 80 yards! The Raiders won Super Bowl XV 27-10 over Jaworski's Eagles. Both players are on card 494 with Plunkett handing the ball off to King as part of the Playoffs subset.
Key rookie cards:
Simms was Barry Sanders before Barry Sanders; he even wore #20 for the Detroit Lions. A knee injury forced early retirement, but only five seasons, Simms was a three-time Pro Bowler in the NFL. In college, Simms won the Heisman Trophy and a National Championship en route to the College Football Hall of Fame.
Kellen Winslow is in both the College and Pro Football Hall of Fame. Winslow made five Pro-Bowls and caught more passes than any other player in both 1981 and 1982 while playing Tight End for the San Diego Chargers.
Art Monk is a legendary wide receiver who is on both the College and Pro Football Hall of Fame. Monk won three Super Bowl championships for his Washington Redskins, was a three-time Pro Bowler, and became the first player ever to catch 900 passes!
Dwight Clark played his career with the San Francisco 49ers. From 1979-1987, Clark caught 506 passes and scored 48 touch downs. No touch down was more famous than "the catch" made in the 1981 AFC Championship game. On January 10th, 1982, the 49ers were losing to the Dallas Cowboys 27-21 with only 58 seconds left in the game. Clark caught a pass on 3rd and 3 to tie the game up! After the TD, the 49ers made the PAT and went on to Super Bowl XVI. Clark won two Super Bowl rings in his career. Who was the QB who threw Clark the pass? More on that legend in a minute!
Key veteran cards:
Terry Bradshaw and Walter Payton are two of the all-time greats. Bradshaw won four Super Bowl championships and two Super Bowl MVPs with his Pittsburgh Steelers. The 1978 NFL MVP is in both the College and Pro Football Hall of Fame. Payton, AKA Sweetness, is on the list of names when you thinking best running back of all-time Payton won the MVP in 1977, made 9 Pro Bowls, won in Super Bowl XX, and was the all-time leading rusher with 16,726 yards when he retired.
THE CARD:
Joe Montana rookie card #216. We saved the best for last. The true reason why this 1981 Topps set is coveted is Montana's rookie card. There is Montana above in the white 49ers jersey, #16 on the front, ready to launch the football.
Montana racked up: two MVP awards (1989 and 1990), four Super Bowl wins (XVI, XIX, XXIII, and XXIV), three Super Bowl MVP awards, eight Pro Bowls, and even won the National Championship for Notre Dame in college. Montana just didn't lose! Twice in his career, he had the 49ers with 14-1 records in the regular season. Easily voted into both the College and Pro Football Hall of Fame, it's no secret now that it was Montana who passed the ball to Dwight Clark for the most famous catch in NFL history.
If you're familiar with card grading, you know PSA is the top grading company. PSA keeps a population report of all cards graded, and as we type, there have been 34,139 Joe Montana 1981 Topps rookie cards graded. Of those graded, only 114 have been graded gem mint 10! The last sale of a PSA 10 Montana rookie card = $40,099.99
$40K - now you see why Just Collect presents 1981 Topps football as The Set of the Week! You may have a valuable card in your collection. As the grade number lowers, the value goes down. A PSA 9 Joe Montana is not worth $40,000, but is valuable with the last sale being $2,662. A PSA 8 is currently hovering at $400.
A PSA 10 Walter Payton was last sold for $1,580. The Bradshaw in a PSA 10 for $312.
According to Gem Rate, a site which tracks all graded cards among each company, here are the top cards graded in the last 30 days from the 1981 Topps set:
Joe Montana = 273 cards graded
Art Monk = 29 cards graded
Walter Payton = 25 cards graded
Kellen Winslow = 14 cards graded
Terry Bradshaw = 14 cards graded
442 total cards from the 1981 Topps football set were graded in the last month according to Gem Rate! Collectors are now realizing the set is vintage and brings all the nostalgia. This is why we made 1981 Topps football the Set of the Week. Make sure to come back next week to learn about our next Set of the Week.
Do you have a graded Joe Montana rookie card or a complete set of 1981 Topps football cards you're interested in selling? Perhaps, you have other vintage cards from different sports. Just Collect is always buying! We offer a
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