Basketball Cards

The Condition Sensitive 1987 Fleer #11 Larry Bird Card

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When you ask a collector to name a Larry Bird card, odds are they will either mention the 1980 Topps Bird, Erving, Johnson triple, or his 1986 Fleer card since they’re two of the most expensive. But collectors who tackle multiple basketball sets will tell you what a tough find a nice 1987 Fleer #11 Larry Bird is.

1987 Fleer #11 Larry Bird Front
1987 Fleer Larry Bird #11 Reverse

It’s widely accepted that the 1987 Fleer set was printed in significantly lower quantities than its 1986 Fleer predecessor. So that already limits the population of Larry’s card in what is a pretty popular set. Then, when you inspect the population report, you will find that the card is super tough to find in high-grade condition.

Of 3075 graded (August 2024), there are only 33 10s (387 9s and 1195 8s). Less than 1% of Bird’s 1987 Fleer cards are Gem Mt 10s. When you compare that to other cards in the set with over 1k regular grades, you can see that only Barkley has a (slightly) more difficult hit rate with PSA 10s. However, the Bird is slightly tougher when combining PSA 9 and 10 populations.

25/3000+ Barkley’s have graded PSA 10, 46/2000+ Ewing’s, 58/3200+ Johnson’s, 215/19500+ Jordan’s, 153/2400+ Malone’s, and 40/3000+ Olajuwon cards.

The Larry Bird is such a tough grade because so many copies have poor centering and registry issues. But why is that? The common belief has to do with the set being printed in 132-card sheets, with 12 rows of 11 cards across. Bird, card #11, was believed to be the last card in the top row (upper right corner), which means it was susceptible to cutting problems.

Despite my reach on social media and throughout the hobby, I couldn’t find a photo of an uncut sheet for a long time. But then I was forwarded a link to a bunch of images from Christopher Sanchirico’s collection, and he owned one! Unfortunately, the image size is small, but you can see the Bird in the upper right corner. In the image’s description, he wrote, “This is one of the only uncut sheets to ever have surfaced from this year (correct me if I’m wrong). Super rare, very colorful, and over 30 years old!”

1987 Fleer Basketball Uncut Sheet

Next, you can see a pair of miscut Bird cards.

1987 Fleer #11 Larry Bird – Off Center / Miscut
1987 Fleer #11 Larry Bird – Off Center / Miscut

Even the first of the three PSA 10 Birds pictured below looks surprisingly off-center for a perfect 10 grade.

1987 Fleer #11 Larry Bird
1987 Fleer #11 Larry Bird
1987 Fleer #11 Larry Bird

With the surge and dip of the basketball card market over the past few years, it’s a bit tough to say what these high-grade 1987 Fleer Birds are valued at now. PSA’s Auction Prices Realized for the card show the last two sales being $3,300 in November 2022 and $3,750 in September 2022, but they were over $5k in February 2021 (up to $7500).  Those 10s were between $1000 and $1500 between August and November 2020 and about $1200 in May 2020. PSA 9s sold for between $260 and $339 this summer, but they were around $140 in May 2020. PSA 8s have settled around $45, which is where they were in May 2020.

Larry Bird is one of the NBA’s all-time greats who achieved every career highlight or award the league has. His popularity continues today, as seen in the demand for his cards. And while you can’t go wrong adding a 1980 Topps or 1986 Fleer Larry Bird card to your collection (they’re pretty liquid in high grade), his 1987 Fleer card will be a bit more challenging for the condition-focused collector.

1950-1951 Junge’s Bread for Energy Advertising Poster

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Christie’s offered this incredible Junge’s Bread For Energy advertising poster in their October 1993 Sports Memorabilia catalog auction. These are some of the toughest cards to find in the hobby.

Christie’s described the Bread For Energy Label Advertising Poster as follows:

The scarcest of all sports bread end label sets is the 48 label “Bread For Energy” set. It includes 16 Movie Stars, 16 Western Stars and 16 Sports Stars four each of boxing, basketball, wrestling, and football. This rare advertisement for Jungle Bread contains an uncut sheet of 16 labels in color including the following sports subjects, Johnny Lujack, Buddy Young, Kid Gailan, Joe Fulks, Gene Stanlee and the very rare Rocky Marciano. In excellent to mint condition.

The expected price was $1,800-2,200.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much information available about the set. While Christie’s said the set has 48 labels, Beckett’s online directory says the set has 44 cards, while the seller of the following sheet on eBay says 42. And if this is the D290-12 set, my American Card Catalog says there are 64 cards.

That seller on eBay wrote,

This 14 inch by 22 inch magnificent piece of sports and movie nostalgia is the only known, uncut bread-end label sheet and advertising poster for the 1950-51 D290-12 “Bread For Energy” series of 42 different multi-sport and Hollywood celebrities.  The labels were distributed on the ends of loafs of various brands of breads & bakeries. Junge’s Bread was not previously known as a D290-12 bread label bakery brand and this advertising poster is as fresh and beautiful as the day it was printed and prepared in 1950.  

A 16-card, 11 inch by 11 inch, uncut sheet of 16 different bread labels, which were originally exclusively identified with Fischer’s bread, have been affixed to a cardboard poster.  These Junge’s Bread, “Bread for Energy labels” are brand new except for a slight crease that runs from Bing Crosby’s head to the bottom of the William Bendix label. The Kid Gavilan, Edgar Bergan, Joe Fulks are all affected. The sheet contains 3 of the 5 keys to the set including Johnny Lujack, Joe Fulks, and most importantly, a rookie issue of Rocky Marciano.  

Curiously, they wrote that their poster, with an asking price of $10k, is the only known piece, when there is another one on eBay with an asking price of $6k, and none of the three, compared to Christie’s, look the same.

Also, Leland’s has sold three of these Junge’s Bread-style posters. The first two have the same look as the previous three I’ve shared; the first sold for $1,364 in December 2020, and the second sold for $1,240 in February 2021 (this appears to be the $10k eBay one).

However, Lelands also sold this Junge’s Bread for Energy poster for $1,364 in April 2021. Notice that it has a few different cards on it!

If you want to see more examples of the cards, BMW Sports Cards has a nice directory. If you know anything else about them, please get in touch with me.

1970-71 Phoenix Suns A1 Beer Regional Issue Complete Set

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Who doesn’t love a scarce vintage regional basketball issue?! Here’s an “ultra-complete” set of 13 1970-71 Phoenix Suns A1 cards.

Mastro offered this grouping in their November 2000 Fine Sports Auctions catalog with a minimum bid of $500. They explained that the scarce advertising cards were produced as six-pack inserts with A1 Premium Beer depicting Suns players in black-and-white photographs, formatted underneath a logo and price header, and distributed in only a very limited regional area. They then started talking a bit about the ten players in the set, plus the variations, but my 2003 Standard Catalog of Basketball Cards (6th Edition) explains it better with a checklist.

That Tuff Stuff guide explains that the cards measure 2-1/4” x 8-3/4” overall and

…feature a black-and-white photo of the player and his name printed beneath the photo at the bottom of the card. The top of the card features “Phoenix Suns picture special,” the A-1 Premium Beer logo and either a 95-cent price (most common), 98 cents (harder to locate) and no price printed. The player photo measures 2-1/4” x 3-3/8” and showcase the player in a posed position. The backs are blank and unnumbered.

Here’s the complete checklist:

  • Mel Counts (95 cents)
  • Mel Counts (98 cents)
  • Lamar Green
  • Clem Haskins
  • Connie Hawkins (98 cents)
  • Greg Howard
  • Paul Silas
  • Fred Taylor
  • Dick Van Arsdale (Error – reversed negative, no price)
  • Dick Van Arsdale (Corrected – no price)
  • Neal Walk (95 cents)
  • Neal Walk (No price)
  • John Wetzel (No price)

That Tuff Stuff Standard Basketball catalog priced a near-mint complete set at $1950 in 2003, and the prices appear to have stood up.

The following 12-card set is available on eBay (July 2024) for $3,600 from BMW Sports Cards and Memorabilia.

Scottsdale Baseball Cards has the following complete 13-card master set available on its site (and eBay) for $2,500.

However, Goldin sold the following 12/13 near master set, graded by SGC, for only $420 in June 2022. However, at the time, they wouldn’t have been my top choice for selling a set like this. 

That Goldin set was also missing the Dick Van Arsdale error, which is one of the tougher cards. The priciest, though, is the Connie Hawkins.

If you’re looking for a graded sample, PSA has only slabbed 67 in total.

PS, while the cards say “12 oz. Bottles” on the front, if you want to augment a collection of them, think about hunting down these four A1 Premium Beer cans; from 1967-1974, the Phoenix Roadrunners were a WHL team.

Morean Auctions sold the pictured lot of empty beer cans for $527 in September 2023.

Celebrating the Reverse – Card Backs With Jim McLauchlin

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So many of us overlook card backs in this day of hard plastic card encapsulation and grading, so I was super happy to find an article dedicated to them while perusing the September 1991 issue of Baseball Cards Magazine.

Baseball Cards Magazine – September 1991

Jim McLauchlin penned an article titled “Card Backs,” in which he celebrated the reverse side of cards. He kicked it off by stating that he likes card backs more than he likes card fronts! Here are the first two pages of the article.

Card Backs – Jim McLauchlin

He talks about the plethora of data that has been included on them, chats about some growing pains in card back design in our hobby’s history before digging into the real story, the specific card back highlights over the past 50 years of sports cards that he jokingly called “the first quasi annual Sy Berger Awards for Card Back Excellence (or Lack Thereof).”

I thought the Set Awards were so well-researched and accurate that they deserved to be shared with folks who don’t have junk-wax-era card magazine back issues, so I’ll share a highlight card from many of the categories before sharing the rest of the article.

Best Cartoons: 1977-78 Topps Basketball

He noted their incredible variety.

1977 Topps Swen Nater

I’ll also note that Guernsey’s sold a lot of original card cartoon art in the 1989 Topps Auction.

Topps Basketball Cartoons – The Topps Auction 1989

Best Cartoon Theme: 1974 Topps Football

Leisure-time activities.

1974 Topps Ken Stabler

Best Back Photography

Anything by Upper Deck.

1991 Upper Deck Jose Lind

Best Narratives

1955 Bowman Baseball.

1955 Bowman Vern Law

Best Non-Use of the Word “Defenseman”

1990-91 Pro Set Hockey for using terms like rugged blue liners, crafty blue liners, veteran blue liners, and bruising blue liners.

Best Bios

1961 Fleer Football.

1961 Fleer Gene Lipscomb

Word Card Back Idea

Puzzles.

Worst Use of Stats

Classic.

Best Quote

1990 Score Football Johnny Johnson.

1990 Score Johnny Johnson

Best Trivia

1975 Topps Carlton Fisk.

1975 Topps Carlton Fisk

Best Prophecy

1958 Topps Sandy Koufax.

1958 Topps Sandy Koufax

Best Cartoon

1971 Topps Football Spider Lockhart.

1971 Topps Spider Lockhart

Best Overused Bio Material

He challenged readers to find a Joe Nuxhall card that didn’t say he was the youngest player in the majors.

Best Obscure Information

1990 Pro Set Football Chris Singleton.

1990 Pro Set Chris Singleton

Worst Use of Stats

1971 Topps Football Charlie Krueger.

1971 Topps CHarlie Krueger

Best Hobby

1958 Topps Stan Lopata.

1958 Topps Stan Lopata

Best Expansion of Standard Height, Weight

1963 Topps Dick Radatz.

1963 Topps Dick Radatz

Best Culinary Card

1974-75 Topps Basketball Louis Dampier.

1974 Topps Louie Dampier

Best We’ll Find Something Nice To Say About This Spud If It Kills Us

1965 Topps Mike De La Hoz.

1965 Topps Mike De La Hoz

Greatest Card Back of Them All

1951 Bowman Leo Nomellini.

1951 Bowman Leo Nomellini

Final Pages of the Article

Card Backs – Jim McLauchlin
Card Backs – Jim McLauchlin

1957/58 Kahn’s Wieners Basketball Salesman’s Sample Brochure

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Here’s an incredible piece I ran across in a 2008 auction catalog that I’m desperate to find more information on (and add to the hobby library): a 1957/58 Kanh’s Wieners Salesman’s Sample New Customer Campaign Brochure!

First, Kahn’s series of basketball cards were released between 1957 and 1965 and are one of the few basketball food issues of the era, so they’re pretty rare, particularly in excellent condition (since they were packaged with hot dogs).

Kahn’s was a Cincinnati-based meat processing and distribution company (now owned by Tyson Foods), so for their first release in 1957, all 11 cards in the set were Cincinnati Royals players.

Based on the brochure’s cover, it looks like Kahn’s provided this album to help out the company’s salespeople; Mastro highlighted that fact in the lot’s description:

Long the fare at Cincinnati sporting events, Kahn’s Wieners are as much a Queen City institution as Pete Rose, Johnny Bench and Boomer Esiason. Offered here is a decidedly scarce and unique item: a Kahn’s Wieners 1958 salesman’s sample brochure containing four sample cards Maurice Stokes, Jack Twyman, Dave Piontek, and George King. This 8-1/2″ x 11″ twen-ty-page booklet is secured at the spine by three staples and reads as a “how-to” guide for the company’s salespersons. Entitled “New Customer Campaign,” the guide stresses the importance of new customers and offers detailed advice on how to handle various types of potential buyers including the “stone faced type,” ” the agreeable type” and the “prejudiced type.” The guide also details “promotional help” in the form of Cincinnati Royals basketball photo cards (to be placed in each one-pound package of “The Wiener the World Awaited”) with tips for budding players on the reverse. The booklet displays EX/MT condition. The approximately 3-1/4″ x 4″ cards are about EX/MT in frontal appearance (sharp corners but with adhesive show-through) and are firmly secured to the pages.

This photo of the cards was included in the catalog.

Please get in touch with me if you have any more pictures or info about this brochure.

1957-58 Topps Basketball Wax Packs

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There was quite a buzz across the hobby, particularly the unopened community when in April 2023, Mile High Card Co. sold the following PSA 7-graded 1957 Topps basketball pack for nearly $128k.

In their auction description, MHCC wrote, “Topps learned their lesson when they overproduced the 1952 Topps baseball series, sending cases of unwanted product to a watery grave. They were much more cost-conscious when they rolled out their inaugural basketball series and packs such as the one featured here are far more scarce.”

However, the underproduction of the 1957 Topps basketball set is a bit of a hobby misconception. In September 2015, Sports Collectors Daily shared that Topps Had Lots of Unsold 1957-58 Basketball. They included the following article from the spring of 1961, which says that Topps had 10M cards from the set left unsold; that’s like 70k boxes!

So, the 1957 Topps basketball packs aren’t scarce from under-printing; they’re scarce because no one wanted them, and Topps appears to have disposed of the leftovers. That disposal and the resurgence of vintage basketball and unopened collecting have skyrocketed the demand for 1957 Topps basketball packs. 

You see, the MHCC sale wasn’t some high-priced one-off outlier; shortly after that, in November 2023, BBCE auctions sold another 1957 Topps basketball PSA 7-graded wax pack for almost $92k.

Now, from a population (supply) perspective, PSA has only encapsulated nine of these packs (three 6s, four 7s, two 8s), and there are a bunch still in GAI holders, but likely not even an entire box worth across both companies.

However, some Facebook Vintage Wax and Packs Group collectors said the MHCC pack was probably part of a late 90s/early 2000s find. They thought they started selling for prices in the mid-teens (~$15k), that there were around 27 of them that GAI mostly slabbed as 7s/7.5s, and that the $128k pack was probably a cross from that find.

That timing seems to align with this lot of 6 GAI-graded 1957/58 Topps basketball packs that Mastro offered for sale in August 2004.

The packs’ grades included: GAI NM-MT 8: 2 packs, GAI NM+ 7.5: 3 packs, and GAI NM 7: 1 pack.

Update: 2 September 2024. After reading this post, a collector reached out and told me he and some friends bought the Mastro lot of 6 packs for ~$25k; they split four and sold two. Two of the guys he split them with sold theirs years ago. Another guy kept his GAI 7.5 and crossed it to a PSA 6 pack years ago, and he still owns one of the GAI 8 packs.

The same catalog had another lot for a single GAI 8-graded pack with a minimum bid of $1k.

Update: 8 September 2024. Mastro also included the following collection of five GAI-graded 1957 Topps basketball packs in their December 2004 Sports Auction of Distinction. One was a GAI NM-MT 8, and four were GAI NM+ 7.5s.

The recent ~$100k price point for these packs is a massive increase from other confirmed pack sales I’ve tracked down.

For example, Lelands sold this GAI 7.5 example for $3,352 in June 2005.

Memory Lane Inc. has two sales in its archives; the first is a GAI 8, which sold for $4,353 in December 2006.

And the second, more recently, is this GAI 6.5, which sold for just under $27k in December 2021.

That December 2021 Memory Lane 1957 Topps basketball pack appears to be the same one I grabbed a screenshot of back in August 2020 from eBay. 

You can see that the owner was asking $33k (plus $4.95 shipping). Many of us thought the price was a little high then; at the time, yes, but not two years later!

The next example of a 1957 Topps basketball pack that I found was, again, from MHCC; they sold this GAI 7.5 example for just under $20k in March of 2018.

Update: 16 September 2024. BBCE Auctions sold the following PSA-7 graded 1957 Topps basketball wax pack this morning for just under $69k.

Here’s a summary of the progression of wax pack sales:

  • June 2005: GAI 7.5, Lelands, $3,352
  • December 2006: GAI 8, Memory Lane Inc., $4,353
  • March 2018; GAI 7.5, Mile High Card Co., $20k
  • December 2021: GAI 6.5, Memory Lane Inc., $27k
  • April 2023: PSA 7, Mile High Card Co., $128k
  • November 2023: PSA 7, BBCE Auctions, $92k
  • September 2024: PSA 7, BBCE Auctions, $69k

If you have any other information about 1957 Topps basketball wax pack sales, please get in touch with me!

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