Three days before Super Bowl III, at a banquet of the Miami Touchdown Club, Joe Namath answered a heckler by guaranteeing that the Jets would win. On January 12, 1969, at the Orange Bowl, the Jets won 16–7. Namath completed 17 of 28 passes for 206 yards and was the game's Most Valuable Player. He had been the AFL's Most Valuable Player that season too.
Topps's 1969 set, the first after the game, runs to 263 numbers in two series. Number 100 is in the first, and the first series has no border at all: the color runs straight to the edges.
No border at all: the gold runs right to the edge.
His background is a deep gold. He stands in the green Jets jersey, number 12, the ball held in both hands at his chest, in a pose very like the year before, with the Jets logo low in the corner and a white strip at the bottom reading Joe NAMATH, the first letters in red, over NEW YORK JETS and QUARTERBACK.
The second series added white borders, which makes the borderless first series easy to tell apart, and harder to keep.
Without a border to protect it, the color at the edges chips and wears more readily than on most cards of the time.
