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Tea and Crumpets

David Charles was by this time well along in developing what he refers to as the “Post cereal extended set.”  His idea was to create a card for players who had been left out of the original set by Post.  This required a photograph from the time period of each player depicted on a new extended series card.  The art of the internet search is David’s forte.  Not only did he find photographs for his cards, he began to find original Laughead photographs as well as pictures of Jim Laughead in action.  Soon he found Post cereal-like photos of Y. A. Tittle and Bob Gaiters in Yankee Stadium followed closely by a photo that showed Laughead shooting a picture of John Morrow in Hiram, Ohio in what we believed was 1961.  In fact, this photo of John Morrow appeared to be the exact instant his Post cereal picture was taken.

The black and white of Bob Gaiters had triggered something in David’s head:

Bob Gaiters Bob Gaiters Salada coin As you know, I have actively searched for photos of players that didn't make the set.  Often I have stumbled across similar looking pictures of players that did make the cut and I paid them very little attention because they weren't the ones used by Post.  Your comments about Laughead and Bradley taking several shots of each player got my curiosity up.   I have had the Gaiters photo saved on my computer for some time now.  I knew it had to be taken by the Post photographer.  I got to thinking if there were duplicates of Gaiters there had to be others as well.   I started searching by looking for Gaiters again on the web but I found his name mentioned very little.  I did an eBay search for Gaiters as well.  Not much there either.   Well...... at first glance not much.  Sometimes things can be right in front of your eyes but you just can't see them.  Sure there was that..... coin.  I don't collect them.  But..... something looked a little familiar.    I looked again at the B&W and sure enough I found a perfect match.  Take a look.  The stadium is in the background.   I then started looking at others from the set on eBay and found that all the Giants had the stadium in the background.  My first reaction was that maybe there was another photographer at the same photo shoot and it just happened to be a coincidence.   But no, if you look at the Eagles you find they all have the building in the background.  If you check out the Redskins you will see the overhang of the upper deck above Hageman's head (you will have to go to eBay to see his and some of the others).  Plum shows up in sequence with the Lions in a Browns uniform and Mitchell shows up in sequence of the Redskins with a Browns uniform as well.

Of course, he was right.  Looking at the 1962 Salada coins one can see that the players shown on the 11 NFL teams included in the set had the same backgrounds as the Post cereal photos.  It would have been nearly impossible that both sets weren’t taken at exactly the same time.  But the question still remained:  did Laughead Photographers take these photos?