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Only 500 sets were ever made.
Yet today, at least one collection of 18 cards printed back in 1977 to commemorate the Pottsville Maroons winning the NFL championship game in 1925 has found its way back into the hands of a local collector.
"Just that there was a local team that won a championship, that's what's interesting to me," said Daniel J. McGinley Jr., Jim Thorpe, who bought his set of collector cards 10 years ago at a card collectors' expo in Philadelphia.
The cards contain photos and profile information on 16 players from the well-known 1925 championship team, a card giving further information on the organization itself and another giving information on plays used that were very different than those used in the National Football League today.
Some of those legendary players whose names are included in the cards are Charlie Berry, Russ Hathaway, Russ and Herb Stein, Barney Wentz, Eddie Doyle, Walter French and W.H. "Hoot" Flanagan.
Other local communities had football teams: the Coaldale Big Green, the Shenandoah Presidents, the Nesquehoning Hurricanes and the Mauch Chunk (Jim Thorpe) Blue Stars, McGinley said.
But none ever shared the NFL status or championship ranking with the Pottsville Maroons, which was later stripped by the NFL because the team had played an exhibition game which violated league rules.
The cards were put out in 1977 by two Pottsville men hoping to create a stir about the legendary team.
Russell F. Zacko, whose father Joseph Zacko was the team's official outfitter and the one who chose the maroon-colored jerseys that gave the team its name, funded the project.
"We figured there would be some interest," Zacko said.
The effort was the brainchild of Lawrence Koch, owner and director of the Braun School of Music, who researched and wrote the biographical information on the back of each card.
"Larry came to me with the idea," Zacko said "I never would have even thought of it."
In an effort to create interesting biographies for the cards, Koch contacted as many surviving members of the team as he could for the information he later used.
"I just enjoyed the idea of it, and some of my relatives on my mother's side (Portz) were early backers of the team," Koch said. "It was a fun project."
After a friend of Koch's printed 500 sets of the cards, the printing plates were destroyed in an effort to make the cards more collectable.
Koch still has four or five sets plus a special uncut set of cards. Others were sold, he said, including some to dealers who might have in turn sold them to McGinley.
WEBMASTER'S NOTE: Reprints of this set are available. These, of course, do not have the same value as the original.
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