Card Show Find #6: 1986-1987 Fleer Marques Johnson

Anyone who stumbles across this blog should already know this, but 1986-87 Fleer was certainly the best basketball set ever made. It was really the perfect storm: take all the rookies over the past four or so years, put them into one set, limit the number of players that go into the set to a paltry 132, so the set is easy to build, and make a relatively decent-looking set. People went nuts, and with good reason. I myself have a small handful of cards from this set, and I certainly wouldn't be opposed to building it at some point.

This is one of the 'commons' from the set. I put 'common' in quotes since I didn't know Marques Johnson was as good of a player as he was, and apparently, the basketball card market either doesn't know or doesn't care. (Probably some of both.) In fact, Marques was a five-time All-Star and was a nasty, athletic forward. Some of the Youtube videos of this guy are quite something. He could easily be in the Hall of Fame.

Great find for a nickel. I didn't even pay a dime for this one.

Card Show Find #5: Roberto Alomar 1995 Flair Hot Gloves

1995 Flair was Fleer's attempt to compete with Upper Deck SP and Topps Finest. While Flair was a fairly worthy adversary, it could never quite hit the same level as SP because it didn't have autographs to drive the product, and it could never quite hit the same level as Finest because it didn't have refractors to drive the product. Both would be significantly more popular over time, and although Fleer eventually adapted to include serially numbered Legacy Collection cards, the blow to the popularity from stinkers like 1995 and 1996 may have been too costly.

This card was seeded 1 in 25 packs and is among the rarest cards from 1995 Flair, whatever that is worth. The set was not die-cut, which limited both its eye appeal and desirability. Alomar is around a middle of the road card from this set, which includes studs like Bonds, Ripken, and Griffey, solid stars like Pudge, Alomar, Mattingly, and Larkin, and questionable inclusions like Darren Lewis and (to a lesser extent) Devon White. White really was a defensive star.

All in all, the only card that people probably ever really wanted desperately out of this set was Hideo Nomo. I can only imagine the despair out of opening this box in 1995 and not getting either a Nomo RC or a Hot Glove. That doesn't stop this from being a nice card for $.10, though.

Card Show Find #4: David Thompson 2005-2006 Fan Favorites Auto.

This is an awesome card from a set that I love. I found this card for either $5 or $7 at a card show a few years ago. It was well worth it. For those who don't know, David Thompson was Michael Jordan's inspiration. He was possibly the best college player of all time, despite not being allowed to dunk, and he very well might have been the best dunker of all time as well. His brilliance was short-lived, but he was deservedly admitted to the Basketball Hall of Fame, which recognizes short bursts of greatness much more progressively than other Halls.

2005-2006 Topps 52 Style (more commonly referred to as its other sports' counterpart Fan Favorites), as my friend put it, would have been a lot better if the player selection didn't suck. He is right. This set could have been really amazing, but Upper Deck has sort of a death grip on older auto stars. Despite this, there's no good reason why this set didn't include more guys like Willis Reed, Bob Pettit, etc. instead of guys like Johnny Newman, Keith Edmonson (did somebody owe this guy a favor?), Trent Tucker, Geoff Huston, and the like. So getting a David Thompson is actually a pretty big find considering the auto checklist was positively lousy.

Additionally, this set is bizarre and tough to build. There are all sorts of quirks with it. Some of the cards have gold foil stamps. Some don't. I have heard that lots of these cards were backdoored. Many of the cards are shortprinted, but they are all shortprinted to different quantities, which is odd. For example, there are like 310 Adrian Dantleys, but only 218 Tony Campbell, and 205 Tom Chambers. Or something like that. What? Apparently this card is SPed to 220. I guess. I picked up a Bob Love for my dad a few years back, and it took months to find. There are a number of other players that aren't easy to find, including Bill Bradley. There are only 85 Earl Monroe. My lesson? Never build this set.

DIME BOX WISDOM: When making an auto set, make it so that PhD. students don't get confused trying to figure it out.

Card Show Find #3: Pau Gasol SPXcitement #/999

I rescued this from a $.20 or 7/$1 box, which is a nice way of getting people like me to buy 7 cards, since you're getting two cards for 'free' (love that mental accounting). This may have been the best such box I've ever seen at a show. Loved the opportunity to pick up a bunch of basketball cards on the cheap.

This card is part of the 2005-2006 SPx set, which consisted of a bunch of solid auto/jersey rookies. I don't know how well this set held up over time (Chris Paul's cards have slipped), but it still has some guys with some room for growth, i.e., Andrew Bogut, whose cards are mysteriously worthless. To 'augment' the set's value, Upper Deck threw in a large numbered insert set to take up some space that would be occupied by base cards, which isn't a terrible idea in principle. However, these cards aren't really all that collectible: it's still costly to build the set, even if you go to a place like checkoutmycards.com, because you're buying cards at probably 25% of book, when the reality is that these should be a quarter each. The death of the card shop has actually served to increase the price of cards like these, where shipping just eats into your margins heavily. Because these cards are not part of the regular set, the only collectors who would want these are master set collectors (probably only ten or so such collectors surface for each set) and player collectors (but at /999, they can find one). Everyone else is at least ambivalent to these.

And that's a shame, because this would probably be a nice set to put together. Great eye appeal, only 999 made, and good player selection make this a worthy set to put together, at least in my view.

Card Show Find #2: Derrek Lee 2007 UD Future Stars Red #/199

If I'm not careful, this blog will turn into a beating a dead horse. But 2007 UD Future Stars was such a stinker of a set that there's no way of sugar coating it.

Let's put it simply. This set was filled with a bunch of lousy sticker autographs of young players that weren't that good. I guess people went after the Dice-K auto- one sold for $100 recently- but most of the autos were terrible. The expected value of a box of this should probably be around $12-18. Checkoutmycards.com has tons of autos from this set in what basically amounts to an internet dollar box.

This particular card is a red parallel of the base set, which is filled with veterans that proceed to have no other purpose for the set. There are other parallels- a gold is numbered to 99, some inserts that are numbered, but these cards are apparently worthless. The Dated Debuts set #/500 is neat in my view, but it's been done before- by Upper Deck- in better ways. There are some interesting dual and triple autographs, but nothing that really speaks to you. A Lincecum/Hughes can't bring the price of two boxes at auction, which is very troubling. Just a poor effort from Upper Deck. This set is a prime example of why the dealer/manufacturer model is struggling to hold up in the card industry.

DIME BOX WISDOM: Is there wisdom to be had here? Yes- if Upper Deck makes a set that says Rookie or Future in the title, stay away.

Card Show Find #1: Travis Hafner Masterpieces /50

This card is numbered to 50, and I did pull it from a ten cent box, so it was only a dime. This would have been an awesome card in like 1997. But it's 2010 now, and nobody wants a gem like this. What a shame. I don't want it either, which is why I'm trying to get $1 for it on eBay. Actually, I'm conducting a little experiment to see what will sell on eBay from a dime box. I want to see if show dealers could maybe do a little better with a little thought. So far, answer seems to be "not really."

UD Masterpieces was a failure. It's a beautiful set, for sure, but it didn't hold up well over time. The main problem for this, and many UD sets, is simply that the hits weren't very nice. Upper Deck could have had some beautiful dual autos in this set of Hall of Famers, but instead they chose to make this set filled with current players instead, which really hurt the set, since you have a choice of any available set on the market to pick those players up. This can easily be seen from the available cards on eBay. What's there that you want to pick up? Not a whole lot. Are you going to pay $200+ for a Mauer auto? No. When you break a box of this, you're guaranteed to lose money, especially when you're forced to put the parallels in the dime box.

The fact that this product failed is a testament to how poorly managed card companies are. Product design can be (and often is) really amazing. This set would be amazing if autographed. What would parallel autos fetch, particularly if a part of the card were cleared out for thin blue ink? It would have been the most highly collected set of 2007, and boxes would have routinely sold today for at least close to MSRP. But instead, the autos were converted to parallels; the other hits were made into single jerseys, and collectors had to hope for 1/1s or press plates to break even.

DIME BOX WISDOM: When products like these fail, the parallels fail too, and that's where this Hafner stands.