Title Change: 1986 Fleer Basketball Set Talk
ndleo
Posts: 4,136 ✭✭✭✭✭
9/1 - This started out as me sharing my 1986 Set but the conversation has turned to the series itself, so I changed the title to open it up.
I started a 1986 Fleer Basketball set many years ago when I lived in Michigan. If you are from Detroit, the show I purchased my first starter lot was at the Roseville Mall Show that used to be in the mezzanine area. A dealer had a 1600 count full of 1986 Fleer Basketball commons at $1 each, $0.50 if you bought 20. I picked through the box and bought the nicest 50 or so I could find. No stars but a nice clean lot to start.
Over the years I purchased more singles and lots. I would upgrade each single if I found a better one. I probably went through over 1000 cards to pull the best commons for myself. I got lucky since the set started to gain a lot of popularity after I started and I was able to get a pretty decent return on the extra singles I sold.
I started with getting the stars in PSA 8. I only got the top rookies - Jordan, Barkley, Ewing, Drexler, Malone, Wilkins, and Mullen. I left it alone for a few years and then decided to man up and get all of the stars and key stars in PSA 9. I expanded the list to include Isiah, Dumars (I'm a Pistons fan), Bird, Magic, Jabbar, and Worthy. I kept the rest raw. I really enjoyed putting this set together. The current basketball market would make this set cost prohibitive for me to put together today.
I had the cards fitted for a new suit at PSA. Here are scans of the set, I'll post more when I have time later this weekend.
Comments
very nice. thanks for sharing!
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
Those are really beautiful. Congratulations on those solid grades!
Great story and a great set. The return on investment if you ever sell is astronomical. They look great and thanks for posting.
Here are the next set of stars. Yeah I'm a tease, I'll show the Jordans last
It took me a while to find a nice Mullin and Dominique. I think Mullin is really condition sensitive for centering?
Very very nice ! Congrats
Here are the raw stickers. The Jordan sticker is a PSA 9, that will be posted later.
I haven't looked at these stickers in 5 years. I might have to send them to Newport Beach.
Love the Akeem
FYI - A few people sent me offers to buy singles. I am flattered but this isn't a covert scheme to market the set. I just got the singles back from PSA re-casing and with the spike in BKB I thought people would be interested in seeing a set from that era. I'm going to look at the raw singles to see how good my eyes were 7-10 years ago.
Awesome cards and stickers!
1977 Topps Star Wars - "Space Swashbucklers"
Like I mentioned earlier, this is the first time I broke out the whole set in at least 5 years. The younger version of myself had a good eye for L/R centering. I just bought a random lot of commons at a local show for $1 each, looks like another round of upgrades!
And now on to the main attraction......
Maybe it’s just me but that complete set all graded 9 is so much more impressive than that 3.8 mil Trout.
Kareem, nique, and Ewing certainly look worth the trip. Good luck!
Join the Rookie stars on top PSA registry today:
1980-1989 Cello Packs - Rookies
Awesome and welcome to the club. I loved every minute of putting it together and have many of your same stories. It is only 132 cards, however still very tough with the centering
Thanks. That set has the perfect combo of size, stars, limited availability (but not too scarce), and condition challenges to make it a great hobby experience. I did enjoy the ride putting it together. I am most proud of the fact that I only bought a few of the commons off ebay. Most of the lots came from shows and store finds, took about 6 year to finish.
How long was the pregnancy?? The full 9 months at Newport Beach? Some babies are going as far as 10-12 months.
I saw that a complete 86 Fleer set with every card in PSA 10 condition sold for over 180k in that same auction where the pristine 86 Jordan went for over 400k.
Does anyone know if there is a reliable estimate on how many complete sets are moved around in the hobby? In the old days the local dealers in Michigan and Illinois told me the rumor is that the total 1986 Fleer BKB print run was 250,000 per card. Not including the stickers, that is 33 million cards, at 8640 cards per case, that is a little over 3800 cases. That always seemed like a reasonable number for basketball from that era.
Using that as a base estimate, could that imply a total pop of around 25,000 sets in the hobby at any time? The tough part for me to judge is that since this set and singles are actively traded, I may see it more often due to the transactions. I want to say it is lower but it is such a popular set to put together and the individual star cards are collected by a lot of player collectors.
I asked a former Fleer exec back in the mid/late-2000s this question, and he told me the same thing, 250,000 of each card.
Look at the PSA 8-9 population in cards and the stickers. That will tell you the max graded sets by grade. Maximum, ratio is likely 25-30% of those that are in a full graded set?
I was thinking graded, raw, or mixed sets like mine. I assume the complete graded sets are much lower than 25,000, probably less than 2500.
Gotcha, for example KAJ sticker in a 9 there are 238 so there can only be 238 sets with the stickers in PSA 9 maximum. Stickers are a good barometer of how man sets are out there and are infinitely tougher than most regular cards, hence the low pops
Yup, I think the PSA 9 complete sets are very tough and the sets actually available for sale is probably a fraction of the 238. I have seen a few nice PSA 8 sets, I saw a PSA 7 set at a show but the centering on the set had bad eye appeal.
My all time favorite set.
I started buying baseball cards in 1987. I would buy packs of 87 Topps baseball at a gas station near our city's baseball park. Beside the box of Topps baseball, there was a box of Fleer basketball. I looked at it a couple of times, but never purchased any packs.
Years later, when the set made it's initial rise in popularity/value, I recalled the gas station situation and felt horribly about it. At that time, Jordan was still really the only 'high dollar' card. I started buying sets and singles at shows. I quickly realized the condition sensitivity and learned which cards were the toughest to find mint and centered.
When Ebay began, the first thing I did was start buying complete sets. Back then, complete sets, minus the Jordans, could be purchased for about $70-$80. I would purchase a set, cherry pick the best singles, and resell the sets on Ebay. (I wish i had kept them all)
Shortly after that time is when i first discovered PSA. At this point, I had already nearly completed my perfect set. I started getting the cards graded with the goal of completing a PSA 9 set. When I would get 10s, I would sell them or trade them for PSA 9s I needed. Eventually, I completed the set.
I sold the set in 2013/14, and was happy with the profit. But I really miss them
When I purchased my raw set for $1000.00 20 years ago from a 100% reliable source, I had the Jordan graded. BGS 8.5. Was in Dallas and had submitted it in person. Picked it up 2 days later. I have pulled 30-35 cards that I consider gradeable mainly due to centering. Corners are sharp/pointed as well. One day maybe will get them graded. My friend who sold me the set threw in 3 wrappers and the empty box. He paid only $5.00 for the set in 1986. If we only knew.
I bought my Jordan, the sticker, the rest of the Bulls team, and a wrapper in the parking lot of the Livonia Mall show for $450 from a car salesman that was having a slow month.
I was literally walking back to my car when a fat guy in a North Face puffy jacket asked me if I wanted a Jordan RC. I love the internet and what it has done for the hobby but I do miss these types of hobby moments. That was a lot for a parking lot deal but I have paid more buying things in a parking lot.
That was the original PSA 8 Jordan I had. It was nice but the centering wasn't as good as the 9 I have now.
Been putting together a BGS 9/9.5 Set. Thru 96 cards GPA of .930 with only (5) 8.5 subs.
As a teenager, I bought tons of packs of this when it first came out. 2 years later, when I was leaving for college, I sold a set for $850 and used it to buy a nice stereo system for my first apartment.
3 years after that, when collecting was super hot, I sold another set plus a few other singles for $1400.
If only we all had the power to see the future...
I vividly remember buying a box of this issue of cards as a teenager for less than $10 the year it was released. It was the only year I ever bought basketball cards and still have them to this day. Getting Jordan graded 8 and holding on to it all these years has been my best collecting decision I ever made.
Three incredible memories for me from this set:
Back in 1989, me, my younger brother, and my buddies hit the local card shop to check out the 1989 Upper Deck high number cards that just debuted. While me and my buddies purchased the Upper Deck cards, my brother who had little money, walked over to the clearance box in the shop and proceeded to buy all the 1986 Fleer Basketball packs marked 4/$1.00. Yes you read correctly! 16 packs total and yes he hit the Jordan. He brought the card to school one day to show his friends, and unfortunately a jealous one mishandled the card and caused a crease on it. I subbed it to PSA about 10 years ago, and came back a 4. Because of money issues, my brother sold the card this past summer to pay bills, for a healthy profit. But the memories remain.
In 1988, a buddy of mine (one who accompanied me to the shop that day from above) wanted me to pick up two basketball sets, the 1986 and 1987 Fleer, if I saw them at a local show I was attending. He gave me $20. I was able to secure both sets for him, and give him back $5. The dealer I found them from happily sold them for $15! Years later, after he graduated from college and moved out of his parent's house, he sold his whole collection including the sets to a local dealer for $100. Didn't even offer it to me first! To this day I still jive him about it.
In perhaps the most incredible memory that I personally encountered with this set is about 15 years ago. A co-worker and I got talking about cards, and I learned he had quite the hoard. When I say hoard, he meant it. He purchased closeouts over the years from all sources, and had so many cards, he filled a 3-family home floor to floor with them. He told me he had multiple Jordan rookies, and I was skeptical. Incredibly on my last day at the store before I was being transferred, he came into work with a 3200 count box of 1986 Fleer basketball. I couldn't believe what I saw. He must have had 30+ sets in numerical order, with the Jordans in a 50 ct. snaptite case. Because we got along, he gave me a going away gift-- a set of my picking! It was an incredible gift, and one I didn't pass up. I selected one of each card, and he selected the Jordan. I asked him about having this large amount, and he told me at that time he still had boxes and cases stored away! To this day I don't doubt his story, as I personally saw his loose cards he broke from wax. I always wanted to follow up with him and see if he still had the cards, but feel he wanted privacy, for obvious reasons. I just sold the set he gifted me this past summer, feeling at that time I was getting top of the market. I still remember that day, and will hope he gets the press and credit he deserves one day for buying up this historic set when he or his estate decides to part with it all. I've told my buddies and a few local collectors of this coworker, and you can imagine how skeptical everyone is. Perhaps someday we will find out if he was telling the truth.
A set for ages, that's for sure. What a ride it was. Glad others enjoy it as much as me and my friends did.
I was a teen in SLC which was an NBA town . I bought STAR first and directly from Star which is crazy to think about. Still have a few order forms!
Then 1986 Fleer . I knew the ropes and started to get the cards signed before -after games, at the hotel, etc.
Way more fun to get the set signed then vs collecting now. The chase was a blast and the stars were the challenge. Today it some player who faded away or died found as the higher values.
The memories are of equal value too!!