Do any White Raiders with Silver numbers exist?

[aeneas01]

Re: Do any White Raiders with Silver numbers exist?

These pics are amazing. I absolutely dig those early Raiders helmets and even photos of them, back in the day, are rare.

Yep, that rivets explanation makes sense, strange look though. Yet, not entirely out of character with the way they did things back in the day. How about those crazy facemask arrangements.

i enjoy collecting digital vintage football photos almost as much as i enjoy collecting football helmets - one thing is for sure, they're a hell of a lot easier to store! what i enjoy most is coming across razor sharp vintage photos, especially razor sharp b&w vintage photos - i've been very lucky and have accumulated quite a collection. i've been especially lucky because i've been able to find many of my favorite team, the rams...

here's a great rams photo from the early 50s. what's most interesting about this shot is that it clearly illustrates the effort that went into getting the rams helmets just right - what a pain in the arse it must have been for riddell to put these things together. no other teams' helmet came close to requiring so much attention to detail during that era...

fwiw this is my "holy grail". it's an early rt riddell helmet, riddell's first model, that was made of transparent plastic and painted on the interior. the 1" strip that runs from front to back was molded in a solid color. so for riddell to put together a rams helmet rt helmet they would:

1. lay down the horn patterns on the inside of the transparent shell
2. spray the interior shell navy blue
3. remove the horn patterns resulting in a navy shell with transparent horns
4. spray the interior again with yellow resulting in a navy shell with yellow horns
5. spray the interior gray, a top coat
6. complete the horn effect by carefully painting the 1" plastic strip

as if this wasn't sufficiently tedious, the rams rt helmets also featured another extremely unique feature. the "wrap around" jaw pads fiited to rt helmets during that era were typically made of leather consisting of two equal sized halves - one half was padded and positioned on the inside of the shell while the other half was non-padded and positioned on the outside of the shell. these two halves were sewn together, creating a pocket, and riveted in place.

the problem was this approach would have covered the bottom part of the rams horn, where the horns looped under the ear holes. consequently riddell produced a special "wrap around" jaw pad for the rams which consisted of the same half of padded leather positioned on the inside of the shell but the exterior half was made of thick transparent vinyl, instead of leather, so that the bottom portion of the rams horns could be seen. mama mia!

in this photo notice a) the hand painted "v" on the 1" strip in order to complete the horn effect. this 1" strip was carefully hand painted on top and on the sides of the strip! b) also notice the reflection of the chin strap buckle confirming that the exterior portion of the wrap around jaw pad was made of transparent vinyl...




...

[princip]

Re: Do any White Raiders with Silver numbers exist?

These pics are amazing. I absolutely dig those early Raiders helmets and even photos of them, back in the day, are rare.

Yep, that rivets explanation makes sense, strange look though. Yet, not entirely out of character with the way they did things back in the day. How about those crazy facemask arrangements.

[aeneas01]

Re: Do any White Raiders with Silver numbers exist?

What's up with all of those rivets on the Otto helmet?

typically these sort of rivet jobs are an equipment manager's stab at repairing (or staving off) cracks in a helmet - a leather or plastic slat is applied to the inside of the shell, spanning the crack, and then riveted into place. but in this case it appears that otto may have some sort of custom padding riveted to the inside of his helmet. hard to say though - if you look very closely it does appear that his helmet does have a crack or two. this might have even been a halftime emergency job given how new and shiny the rivets look compared to the suspension rivets...

here are a few more interesting vintage shots...

check out this photo from 1963 - silver numbers on the sleeves. yet silver numbers on the front and back of the jersey didn't appear until seven years later....



here's another cool photo from the raiders 1964 training camp - some players still sport the 1963 helmet decals while others sport the more familiar helmet decals which the raiders switched to in 1964. and some players are sporting helmets that have yet to have decals applied...



and another great sideline shot from 1963....



...

[500goals]

Re: Do any White Raiders with Silver numbers exist?

You guys are the best. Thanks for the photos. I wonder if "A" single jersey survived in its original condition. Raifie

[princip]

Re: Do any White Raiders with Silver numbers exist?

What's up with all of those rivets on the Otto helmet?

[aeneas01]

Re: Do any White Raiders with Silver numbers exist?

yeah, that's a classic sports illustrated archival shot - one of the great things about that photo is it shows both the 1962 lid (left, black with white stripe) and the new, first year, 1963 "decaled" lid.

speaking of photos, here's a better shot of the 1970 road jersey lettering - all black.




and speaking of raider lids, how about this shot of mr. jim otto...



...

[princip]

Re: Do any White Raiders with Silver numbers exist?

I love this photo:

[princip]

Re: Do any White Raiders with Silver numbers exist?

I would love to see some lids with that logo they had in '63 was it?

[aeneas01]

Re: Do any White Raiders with Silver numbers exist?

i always thought the black-trimmed silver numbers on white shirts was a pretty slick color scheme however the style quickly bombed because the jersey numbers were tough to make out from the stands, tough to pick up on game film and didn't work with television - consequently the color scheme was a one season wonder (1970). the reason these shirts aren't around is because the raiders used them the following year - they just removed the silver numbers from their black backgrounds, i.e. the black trim became black numbers in 1971. fwiw the player's name wasn't lettered in silver as were the numbers in 1970, the lettering was black. at least that's my understanding.



...

[500goals]

I was wondering if any White Raiders jerseys with the silver name and numbers survived and made it into the hobby. I would love to own/see one. Thanks Raifie