1935 National Chicle Bronko Nagurski: THE Vintage Grail Football Card to Own!

The two most desirable vintage baseball cards sought after by high-end “grail collectors” are the 1909 T206 Honus Wagner and the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle. In basketball, it’s one of three rookies with “grail” status highly dependent on the card grade — George Mikan, Bill Russell, or Wilt Chamberlain. There is one true vintage grail football card and that is the 1935 National Chicle Bronko Nagurski.

The set of National Chicle Co. Football Stars is only a 36-card set in total and the 2-3/8-inch by 2-7/8-inch size and the art style will remind collectors of the 1933 Goudey baseball set. What’s more interesting is that this is the little brother set to the 1935 Diamond Stars baseball and other set of 240 cards that is also produced by National Chicle Co. of Cambridge, Mass.

According to the PSA CardFacts site, National Chicle originally had this as only a 24-card set before they released another dozen cards. This means that the “rookie” card of Bronko Nagurski almost never made it to production. Another issue to consider is that National Chicle was not a long-living survivor in card production and the cards were not widely distributed.

1935 National Chicle Bronko Nagurski

While Knute Rockne is the most widely known name in the set, this set’s true leader is none other than Bronko Nagurski at card #34 (again, thanks for that second release of a dozen cards!).

One key issue proving the difficulty of selling football cards in gum and candy wrappers in 1935 was that it was still during the Great Depression when the official unemployment rate was still 20%. If one-in-five was out of work, you would assume at least two-of-five more adults were barely getting by. Now add on even more data showing that the average income (archives.gov) was just $1,368 per year using 1940 data. This was a time when millions of Americans were relying on bread lines and soup lines for food. The end result is that even a 1-cent per pack expense was not a top priority for the Average Joe at the time.

HOW SCARCE THESE CARDS ARE

Now, let’s zoom forward to 2010 to 2025 when so many raw cards from the early 1900s and earlier were being graded by SGC, PSA and Beckett BVG. At the present time, PSA’s entire population for the 1935 National Chicle set is right at 8,100 cards. PSA counts just 203 graded examples at whole grades and half (.5) grades and another 8 with qualifiers (OC/MK/MC). Now add in SGC and BVG graded examples, knowing there is a disparity in SGC population data:

population of 56 listed as R311-2

population of 23 listed as (R311-2)

Beckett’s BVG population report counts a total of 12 BVG examples.

Even if we ignore the likelihood that half of the BVG cards may have been crossed over to PSA or SGC by now (you know why), and even with the weird double-count at SGC, this is less than 300 total graded examples of the rookie Bronko Nagurski. The Vintage Card Prices app shows a total combined population of just 246 Nagurski rookies.

And to make scarcity an even wider issue, the PSA Set Registry counts 104 sets being built for the 1935 National Chicle. It is obvious that not all of those sets in the registry are complete. That said, that is 104 different people who either have or need this Nagurski card for their prized set registries. How many examples does that leave for individual grail chasers to lock down in their collections?

BRONKO VERSUS OTHER GRAILS

To prove that the 1935 Bronko Nagurski rookie is “The Grail” of football grails, you just cannot acquire this card in any condition now in any grade for under $10,000. That’s just not the case for other football greats. The 1933 Sport Kings Jim Thorpe cards sells for under $5,000 routinely. The Jim Brown rookie cratered in price and can easily be found for under $1,000 to $1,250 in very presentable condition.

The last “Other Grail” is the card counted as the oldest football card. This is the 1888 N162 Goodwin Champions card of Yale captain Harry Beecher. This is a set of “Great Americans” and is the only football card with about 20 graded examples by PSA and 45 counted by SGC. It still sells routinely for less than $10,000.

Vintage collectors can buy rookies of Johnny Unitas, Bart Starr, Otto Graham and other 1950s for under $1,000 with much larger card populations.

A PSA 5.5 example of the Nagurski rookie sold for $81,000 in auction after 45 bids in October/2024 and a PSA 4 sold for $34,800 in August/2024 after 55 bids.

In 2024, there were only 3 registered auctions of a PSA 1 graded Nagurski rookie:

• one PSA 1 sold for $16,200 in August/2024 (45 bids);
• one PSA 1 sold for $16,800 in July/2024 (42 bids);
• and another PSA 1 sold for $14,400 in April/2024 (59 bids).

Two other graded sales stand out in this mix as well:

• PSA 2 sold for $19,500 in January/2025, and a PSA 2 sold for $15,600 in August/2024.
• PSA 1.5 example of the Nagurski rookie also fetched $19,800 in December/2023 after 72 bids.

Of the SGC graded sales that have been seen recently:

• SGC 40 (old grade) sold for $28,800 in May/2024.
• SGC 20 (old grade) sold for $10,200 in April/2024.

Only two sales of Nagurski’s rookie have sold for under $10,000 going back into late-2022:

• PSA Q/1.5 sold for $9,600 in September/2023 after 28 bids.
• BVG 1 sold for $5,760 in December/2022 after 59 bids.

NAGURSKI’s BRUT FORCE

Bronko Nagurski was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in the Class of 1963 and he was a charter member. The Hall described him as the symbol of power football in the 1930s and noted that no one came close to Nagurski for sheer brutal line-smashing. His running style was described as “never fancy” — just straight ahead, over and through the opposition. And while the Hall called him a bull-like runner, he was also said to have no peers for blocking and tackling.

Nagurski was a hulking 6 ft 2 in who was registered at 235 pounds during his pro career. He grew up farming and in mills in the bitter cold of the north. Nagurski was a physical monster for that era and was larger than most linemen of the day. He was said to have had a 22-inch neck, a size 8 helmet and a 19-1/2 ring size. He often required several tacklers to get him down. Stats from the 1930s to 1950s just do not measure up to a completely different game in the modern era so that is being skipped over for now.

There are more ways than just his running to count Nagurski as tough. In college he played both as a tackle on defense and fullback on offense and was All-American in 1929. And as a pro for the Chicago Bears, he played from 1930 to 1937 – and he even came back to play tackle in 1943 as the Bears had lost so many players to G.I unforms for World War 2. He suffered from many knee and ankle injuries.

And if this isn’t rough and tough enough, Nagurski had a second athletic career in the 1930s as a professional wrestler on top of farming in the off-season. And while his peak was as a younger wrestler, Nagurski continued to wrestle into the 1950s. There is even a 1955 Parkhurst wrestling card of Nagurski. The back of that card calls Nagurski one of the greatest all around athletes of all time – and powerful, clever and experienced. That card clocked an older Nagurski in at 6 feet and 245 pounds.

Sports injuries eventually caught up to Nagurski, but after sports he returned to farming and didn’t die until 1990 at the age of 81 years old. He died in International Falls, Minn. — one of the coldest towns and cities and with massive snowfall in the Lower 48.

WANT TO BUY A 1935 NAGURSKI?

Ogg’s Cards LLC has one 1935 National Chicle Bronko Nagurski in inventory. It is a PSA 2 graded example and is PSA serial#49927692. Please contact us with any interest.