A Little History

The Sunoco stamps were given away at Sunoco and DX gas stations in the fall of 1972. I remember my father bringing home a few packs for me, and I was hooked. The station near our house in Doylestown Pa would sell me the packs for 5 cents each, when I biked up to see them.
The set is comprised of 624 stamps - 24 for each of the 26 teams in the NFL at the time. There were 12 stamps for offense and 12 stamps for defense. Up until the 1990 Pro Set football card issue, this was the largest football card set ever attempted.
The stamp packs contained 9 stamps, and the fronts of the packs had a painting of 1 of 4 teams- the Eagles,Jets,Dolphins or Cowboys.
There were 2 different collector albums for the stamps to be put in. The 56 page regular album led off with a brief 2 page article on Super Bowl VI, and then had 2 pages for each team, in which the stamps were placed. Each spot for the player had his uniform number, height,weight,age and college attended.
The deluxe 128 page album offered much more to the collector. It had an article on the football Hall of Fame, a very colorful article on the stars from the 1971 season, the Super Bowl VI article and an interesting piece on NFL stars from small towns. This article featured stories on Bob Lilly,Garo Yepremian,Greg Landry Bobby Bell and Jim Plunkett.
In addition to the stamp pages for each team, it also had 2 pages of history and records for every team. The deluxe album is full of great full color action photos.
One thing that seperates the 72 Sunoco set from the Topps issues of the era, is that the Sunoco stamps were licensed by the NFL and the NFL players association. If you look at Topps cards from the day, the team logos were airbrushed from uniforms and helmets. The Sunoco stamps were permitted to use all NFL logos and it makes a big difference in the photography.