This is not Jim Brown's base card in the 1961 set. That is #71. Number 77 belongs to a small run Topps called Football Highlights, recapping the 1960 NFL season, and its title is printed along the bottom in quotation marks: JIMMY BROWN GAINS 1257 YARDS.
Those 1,257 yards led the league. Brown led it in rushing in eight of his nine seasons.
The design is the charm of the card. The photograph sits inside a rounded screen with a brown wooden frame around it, a television set of the day, with an oval in the corner reading 1960 FOOTBALL HIGHLIGHTS. On the screen Brown runs in a white road uniform, the ball under his arm, defenders closing in.
Topps framed the 1960 season as a television broadcast. Brown was the lead story.
The set has 198 cards: the NFL from #1 through #132, then the new American Football League from #133, with a checklist at #198. The highlight cards appear only for NFL teams, and they are counted among the first football subset cards of their kind.
The same photograph turned up again a year later, in black and white, as the small inset on Brown's 1962 Topps card. The solid color fronts show print dots, and the blue backs chip at the edges.
