Football Cards

Andy Malycky is a renowned Canadian football card-collecting authority who has literally written the book(s) on them. He describes the 1954 Blue Ribbon Tea CFL cards as “the jewel in the crown of Canadian football vintage trading cards.” While it seems the hobby has established that they weren’t actually issued with tea but rather with milk chocolate candy bars, I don’t want to dwell on that detail. Instead, I want to emphasize what a fantastic set it is, one that, unfortunately, many collectors don’t know much about.

1954 Blue Ribbon CFL Set Overview

The 80-card Blue Ribbon team features start players from six Canadian Football League teams – the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, Ottawa Roughriders, Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Edmonton Eskimos, Calgary Stampeders, and Montreal Alouettes. However, there were nine teams at the time. No one is quite sure why the Saskatchewan Roughriders and Toronto Argonauts were omitted, but the British Columbia Lions might have been excluded since they were an expansion team. 

Anywho, each 2 1/4″ x 4″ card includes a posed player photo printed within a white border. It’s the first CFL set to be printed in color. Each card was a four-color colorized version of a black and white photo supplied to Blue Ribbon directly from the teams. So Malycky surmises that it’s possible the excluded teams didn’t supply any photos, and that’s why Blue Ribbon didn’t include them.

The backs had black text on grey stock and included the card number along with the player’s name, position, team, a bilingual bio, and a mail-in offer for what is now a scarce and pricey album that I’ll discuss in a bit.

The set is generally the most expensive of all the major CFL sets, particularly in nice condition. It owes a lot of its popularity to the fact that a lot of great American collegiate greats played in Canadian leagues at the time since they paid more than the NFL teams did.

The set included 20 cards from the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, presumably because Blue Ribbon was headquartered there. Malycky said the cards were more available in Winnipeg and Toronto (which is where Colorgraphic printed the cards).

PSA has only graded 531 cards across the entire set, with the typical card returning as a four or five. SGC has only graded 38 examples.

1954 Blue Ribbon CFL Set Distribution

Again, I don’t want to dwell on the set’s name, but it’s become widely acknowledged that these cards have been mistakenly associated with Blue Ribbon tea. In his book, Malycky notes that research and interviews with folks who acquired the cards as kids have established that the set was actually issued inside Blue Ribbon Milk Chocolate candy bars. 

Now, I don’t have access to these interview notes, and rather than focusing the article trying to convince PSA (the most recent SGC slabs just say “1954 Blue Ribbon”) to re-label a bunch of cards, I think I’ll move on to sharing the set’s key cards.

1954 Blue Ribbon CFL Key Cards

1954 Blue Ribbon #1 Jack Jacobs

As a charter member of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 1962, Jack Jacobs is fittingly the first card in the set. He was a phenomenal all-around player at the University of Oklahoma, where he was the starting QB and punter. He was then drafted in the 2nd round of the 1942 NFL draft. Jacobs is credited as one of the key figures in making the forward pass a big part of pro football, so it’s fitting that the back of his card shares that he “owns every passing record in the west.” 

1954 Blue Ribbon #7 Harry (Bud) Grant

Today, Grant is most known for being the head coach of the Minnesota Vikings for 18 seasons, but he’s also a member of the Canadian Football and Pro Football Hall of Fame. Plus, Grant has an awesome card in the 1950 Lakers Scott’s set – his play with the Lakers is mentioned on the back of the Blue Ribbon card.

1954 Blue Ribbon #47 Bernie Faloney

Faloney was an outstanding scrambling QB considered one of the CFL’s Top 50 players of the modern era. He was drafted by the 49ers and offered a $9k contract, but the Edmonton Eskimos offered him $12.5k – plus the Canadian dollar was worth 10% more than the USD at the time. He was elected to the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 1974. 

1954 Blue Ribbon #48 Jack Parker

Parker was another great all-around player who finished his college career at Mississippi State. He was drafted by both the New York Giants and Edmonton Eskimos, and despite the Giants offering more money, he decided to play for the Eskimos because his former QB coach had become the Eskimos head coach. Parker was a great runner and a strong QB, and he played solid defense as well. 

1954 Blue Ribbon #51 John Bright

Bright is a Canadian and College Football Hall of Famer. He played college ball at Drake before being drafted by the Eagles. However, he decided to play for Calgary because he didn’t know how he would have been treated as the Eagle’s first black player. Bright was a great RB who was the CFL’s all-time leading rusher when he retired.

1954 Blue Ribbon #68 Sam Etcheverry

Etcheverry was elected to the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 1969 after leading the CFL in passing from’ 54-’59. He famously threw for 586 yards in a game in 1954 – that record stood for 39 years!

1954 Blue Ribbon Photograph Album

The back of the cards called for folks to “Collect Picture Cards OF OUR FINE CANADIAN FOOTBALL PLAYERS” and to “Mount them in Our Blue Ribbon PHOTOGRAPH ALBUM.” It was available for 25 cents. 

The album is incredibly scarce today. Classic Auctions offered the following example for sale in June 2011, along with a complete set of 80 cards; it sold for $5825.63. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to track down any sales of an album on its own, but I think they’d be valued between $500 and $600.

1954 Blue Ribbon Original Photographs

I don’t think any of the original photos that the teams sent to Blue Ribbon to colorize for the set have emerged, but a few team issue sets have been written about that share pictures that were the basis for the Blue Ribbon set, including the 1954 Stampeders Team Issue Action set, the Mid-1950’s Eskimos Team Issue Action set, the Mid-1950’s Tiger-Cats Aggus set, and the Mid-1950’s Alouettes Birmingham Portrait and Action sets. All of these photos are extremely rare, and I suppose if any came up for auction, they’d cost a small fortune to acquire.

1954 Blue Ribbon Significant Sales

Just because I said the set is a little under-appreciated and unknown doesn’t mean the cards are cheap. There aren’t a lot of graded copies, and as the crown jewel of CFL cards, demand from those targeting the set can be a little intense. Heritage sold both the PSA 5 Bud Grant pictured above in July 2014 for $621 and the pictured PSA 8 Jack Jacobs for $690 in January 2022.

I already shared that Classic Auctions sold a complete set for $5825.63 in 2011; well, a year earlier, in May 2010, REA sold a complete set with an album for $3818.75.

More recently, in August 2021, REA sold a near-complete set of 72/80 cards for $4680. Years earlier, in November 2005, Lelands sold a high-grade near-set of 59 cards for $4571.

PWCC sold a complete set for $3383 in January 2019, described as mostly being in Vg-Ex to ExMt conditions with a few lower.

In November 2023, the following complete set was available on eBay, in Pr to Ex-Mt condition, for ~$5000.

Conclusion

I think the 1954 Blue Ribbon Milk Chocolate set is incredible, and I’ll be watching for complete sets and copies of the Jacobs and Grant cards, in particular, for my collection. If you’re interested in learning more about the 1954 Blue Ribbon CFL set or any other Canadian Football collectible, pick up the two volumes of Andy Malycky’s Collecting Canadian Football books.