Identifying APBA Football Card Sets

It seems every day, I’m learning something new about APBA- and a lot of times it’s from questions I receive from readers.  Today was no exception.  Fred F. wrote me with a simple question about identifying APBA Football sets:

I have a set of APBA football cards but cannot remember what season they are for. Is there something similar to the “12” list for baseball that accomplishes the same thing for football?

 

Fred is referring to Doug Burg’s famous APBA Baseball Card 12 List and Publication Data list which is a great resource for identifying APBA sets.  Alas, it’s only for APBA BASEBALL sets, not Football.

So, I forwarded the question on Geoff of the APBA Football Club figuring he would know (he’s my go-to guy for APBA Football questions).  Indeed he had the answer.  He pointed me to this chart which helps identify APBA Football sets previous to 1986 (starting then, the copyright date is printed on the cards).

The method is similar to baseball’s ‘12 List’.  Essentially, each year before 1986, the numbers where the result numbers 33 & 34 or 35 & 36 will appear in the same dice roll number.

Credit for the original text goes to the legendary APBA Football guru, Howard Ahlskog but you can see a scan of it on the APBA Football Club page.

Thanks, Geoff for the great info and thanks to Fred for a good question!