Joe Namath and the 1965 Topps set

[TanksAndSpartans]

Why does this card command the prices it does? (recently did an eBay search for sold listings of PSA graded examples of this card)

I’m not trying to disparage Joe at all, he’s a hall of famer and I think would appear in most lists of the top 25 QBs of all time. The card is a short print, which explains some of the high price, but I don't get the sense the card is an extreme rarity, right? Interestingly, from my own observations, I think most casual and modern (meaning not much interest in history) football fans feel Namath is in some sense “overrated”. I don’t agree with that, just wondering about the popularity of the card. Could his “celebrity” be inflating the price after all these years?

Looking at: “The Top 100: NFL's Greatest Players” television series, every player has a “mainstream” rookie card:

http://www.psacard.com/PSASetRegistr...on.aspx?c=8537

Sure, the list doesn’t include a lot of stars from the 20s-50s which means lots of cards from recent times (the era when sports cards were produced in relatively large quantities and preserved relatively well), but for arguments sake its a list of a lot of the game’s all-time greats. Among those 100 cards, I believe only the Nagurski sells for higher prices than the Namath (doing an apples to apples comparison regarding condition) (maybe 33 GSK Thorpe 3rd?). I'd be really surprised if we could get someone who knows about football, but not football cards to ever guess that... (The question would need to be framed carefully though - condition could be kept constant by say choosing the PSA 5 grade. The trickier part would be to mathematically adjust all the prices such that if there were 300 Jim Brown PSA 5s, but only 50 Bob Lilly PSA 5s, we'd need to increase Brown's price and decrease Lilly's to keep quantity constant at say 100 - just an example.)

Finally, I don't recall seeing 65 "tall boys" in anyone's favorite set list. Is it a favorite set? Technically, I believe its AFL only, right? I think Philadelphia had NFL.

Thanks for any opinions. And feel free to take the thread in different directions - discussion of the 65 Topps set and even the NFL top 100 list are both relevant.