Twenty years ago, Fleer decided to fill a void in basketball card collecting. 1986 would be a year to reinstate his name to make NBA cards. This would be a good move considering that Topps had stopped creating basketball cards after the 1981-82 season and their only competitor would be the Star company with their sparsely distributed bagged cards. Having something of a monopoly in hand and the luck of a new NBA star on the horizon, “Michael Jordan” to anchor this set, would create what would be considered his rookie year on the basketball cards.
The numbers set from 1 to 132 on ordinary cards and from 1 to 11 on sticky stickers with a checklist. Timing is everything and having a great set of rookies and what would be considered rookie cards for stars like Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Chris Mullin, Clyde Drexler, Joe Dumars, Patrick Ewing, Karl Malone, Hakeem Olajawon, Isiah Thomas , Danny Ainge, Wayman Tisdale, Dominique Wilkins, and James Worthy would make this a game to be labeled the greatest basketball of all time that could never be surpassed as the Topps 1952 baseball card game.
But there are more than just rookies on the checklist, with cards from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Larry Bird, Julius Erving and Magic Johnson also included. Add it all up and there is something for just about every basketball fan, making it a hit with collectors to this day.
Finding individual cards from this set isn’t that hard on the internet or at big card shows, and graded versions of top rookies often change hands for big bucks. Two things to watch out for when examining the condition of singles in this game are centering (the edge should be evenly distributed on both sides of the card) and edge chipping, an issue that plagues many sports card games with colored borders).
1986-87 Fleer Tag Info!