Absence of Basketball Cards in the Early 1980s...Why?

JackWESQ

It's the 1980-81 NBA season and the league just welcomed two much hearlded rookies, one Larry Legend and one Magic Johnson. Cards are produced for the 1980-81 and 1981-82 seasons and then proof! Nothing till the 1986-87 Fleer (save for Star and Nike cards). Does anybody know what happened here? To be sure, there were popular players at the time, e.g. Bird, Magic, Kareem, Moses, McHale, Erving, etc. I'm sure some kids looked up to these guys. So I wonder why the lack of production.

Like all other things, I suspect it was just simply a matter of economics, e.g. supply and demand and there was no demand at the time. If anyone has any insights into this, I'd be interested. Thanks.

/s/ JackWESQ

GOODLIEU

Jack I agree with you about the Supply and Demand. Sadly Vintage Basketball has always been the hobby stepchild. with only three major sets 1948 Bowman,1957 Topps and 1961 Fleer before the 1969-1981 Topps run which caused huge gaps for collectors. I sometimes wonder what whiz kid at Topps was responsible for the discontinuance of the line after the 1981 set. Bird,Magic,Jordan.Barkley,Olajuwon,Malone,Pippen Stockton and more were not on Topps cards for ten years. I wonder if that "Executive" still is employed. What a colossal foul up. Amazing!

itzagoner

In spite of the fact that Magic and Bird brought an exciting new personality to the league in 1979, the truth is that few people cared about the NBA of that era until Jordan entered the league in '84....the Lakers-76ers NBA Finals Game 6 of the year 1980 was actually delayed for viewing on TV on the West Coast as I recall. By 1982, when the Lakers played the 76ers in the Finals again, the ratings had soared....the timing of not only Jordan's entry into the league, but that of Barkley, Olajuwon, Ewing, Drexler, Wilkins, et al perhaps was more substantial than Bird/Magic or even Dr. J......the card manufacturers needed something solid to lean on if they were going to mass produce, so by 1986 it was, as they say, a no-brainer....Fleer got busy, and the rest is history!

5STAT

The fact that everyone forgets is that even though the TV market and merchandise market was alive and well for basketball....the card market stank the house out from 1981 through 1989!!!

Topps stopped producing basketball because of the mass amount of returns!! Simply put...no one was buying basketball...it didn't matter who was in it. The 80-81 design was a FLOP...people didn't know how to make the set...people hated the panels..and the stuff was literally JUNK until late 88.

As for Fleer getting back into it...yes..in hind sight it looks like a good move...but even then the 86 set again wasn't a big hit in the hobby! At 50 cents a pack and 2 sets per box...no one was big on the stuff..until the big card boom of the late 80's.

Fact, in 1987 I had a dealer near my local college that owed me $250 for some cards that I had sold him. He didn't have the cash on hand and just about bent my arm to take 20 sets of 86 Fleer that he was stuck with. YES...$12.50 a set..."Put it in the closet, someday it's going to be good...basketball will take off like the rest!!"

He was right...it just took a couple of years..

From this same dealer, I had bought a wax case of 80-81 for $120. Again..this stuff was junk back then!!

In 1989, I sold the 80-81 case for $900 to go on spring break. I thought I was a king!! I laughed all the way to the bank....who's laughing now!!??!!
I got out of school in May...married in July..and had my 1st daughter in November....(ok math wiz's...no need to crunch numbers here..LOL)...but also opened my 1st store in November...to suppliment my income.

At that time, Fleer sets were $400. Every couple of months I sold a set. They were up to around $1100 in 94..when I closed my store...but at that time Ionly had the nicest 2 left!!

So fast forward through the years, when they were making the stuff...no one wanted it. No one wanted it for years after it's production.....no demand..no supply.

The card boom of the late 80's brought these sets to the forefront. When everything was worth something.

Sets and wax were available....but singles stunk the house out...
That was until a little company called PSA started something called the Registry....

That's when the market for sets/wax and high end singles really took off.

So in 2006 it seems like a no brainer that these sets are impotant...but in hind sight, the demand hadn't really been there until the last 10 years...more so now than ever before.

alnavman

alnavman

Sorry about the blank post ....to add to what 5STAT said, I remember my brother going to one of thelocal drug stores in the area in 87 and they were blowing out the 86 Fleer packs for next to nothing.......back then no one wanted basketball......in fact my brother kicks himself to this day because he didn't keep any of the packs unopened...and he sold the one's he did open before the prices really took off....

itzagoner

certainly no arguement about Basketball card values essentially taking off along with the rest of the hobby.....the money being shuffled around for BBall was actually spent on Star Basketball sets before the Fleers became popular....Remember the Jordan Bags? Where is that stuff now? LOL......

5STAT

all in PRO and GEM holders!!

oh..and a few dozen bags in my safe too.....

GOODLIEU

Staat your right about the 1980 Topps panels. I had totally forgotten how much I hated that set when it came out. I guess in retrospect Topps was just trying to do something to energize the B-Ball market. Still you have to wonder why it took them as long as it did to re-enter the market when as Itzagoner stated the Star cards were moving despite no commercial advertising and limited selling venues.

RedHeart54

I wonder why it took so long for them to re-enter the market years after Jordan was popular. Wasn't '92-93 their first set since '81?

5STAT

Even after Jordan, the market was still soft until the early 90's.
It was the SHAQ hype that peaked Topps interest again...and every other manufacturer for that matter. The printing presses ran constantly and they again joined the mass hysteria of the 90's card spike.

Even when I closed my retail in 1994, I had a monster box of 86 and 87's...probably 3200 88's...just as many 89's....and 5K from everything 1990 and after. I wholesaled the entire lot to a local dealer....$800........they were basketball....they were commons and smaller stars...but they were mint from packs...OUCH!!

The market hadn't really taken off until about 3-4 years ago anyways. 1987 Fleer boxes were $400- $450...1988 Fleer boxes were $150-200..more people wanted the 88's...better rookies!! Go figure now!! $800 and $500 respectively....

It's funny how market factors change what's what from year to year. On that note, around that time...I passed on 5 cases of 1986 Topps Baseball traded sets...$800 a case..another woops!!

As for the Star sets holding a market...people either loved them or hated them!! The people who have them made out well....these days...they are all losers do to Home Shopping selling off reprints.

ONE last factor on the late 70's through late 80's basketball. When this stuff was abundant, there was no internet!! I had droves and droves of it come in my store. Back then, if you bought a collection...you sat on it until you either sold it to someone who walked through the door...or sold it at a monthly show. You had to move one collection before you bought another...it made it tough...what happens when you had product..and your 150 customers looked through it..and no one else was out there?? IT SAT!!!

Today is like no other time! I can't seem to ever stop buying...because my selling venues are so much more abundant. Yes, I still have store customers....but even more on Ebay....email sales...online store..Ebay store..
I can now buy a collection...spend a few days or weeks listing it....and start getting my $$$ back the night it hits online.
150 customers coming through the door...why bother...with an email list of 2K people!!

Buy-list-sell...break even.....buy more-list-sell...break even...buy more more more...-list...sell...etc...etc...etc.....

itzagoner

want to add another important point....another factor in the decision making by major card manufacturers was a simple matter of numbers....in baseball and football and even hockey to a lesser degree, there were and are substantially more players to chose from and produce cards for than a basketball team of ONLY 12 players.....even when Fleer started producing cards in '86, they only made cards for 132 players and that wasn't even all of them.....Hoops used David Robinson as their poster child and rode that to a short-lived success.....this practice continued, until, as 5STAT pointed out, the Shaq hype forced Topps back into the mix, and of course, as notorious mass producers, they employed this same tactic in making cards for all players, future players, former players, players who played, retired, came back, retired again.....you get the idea

CDsNuts

Yes, Topps dropped the ball on all those big RC's in the mid 80s. But they more than made up for it with the 1993 Archives set that showed what the RC's would have looked like if they were done using the corresponding baseball design for that year.

Lee

5STAT

Lee...

I personally love that set! I have a regular and gold set here in my office.

But at the time..it was another love it...or hate it set...

BTW....took 1st in an online tourney last night...#1 out of 3436 people...if I'm not playing with one form of cards..it's another!! lol

Besides, I had nothing better to do from 1:15 am to 7:40 am this morning....6+ hours of pure enjoyment....

CDsNuts

Congrats on the win. Those late night tourneys are sick aren't they? "Let's see, I could sleep like I normally do, or I could stare at my computer screen for 6 straight hours and feel like hell the next day......." And it's not like you can go to sleep right afterwards anyway- Your mind is still racing because of some crazy badbeat you've taken, how you played a hand wrong, or revelling in your victory. It's pure mental torture.

Lee

Boopotts

<< <i>Congrats on the win. Those late night tourneys are sick aren't they? "Let's see, I could sleep like I normally do, or I could stare at my computer screen for 6 straight hours and feel like hell the next day......." And it's not like you can go to sleep right afterwards anyway- Your mind is still racing because of some crazy badbeat you've taken, how you played a hand wrong, or revelling in your victory. It's pure mental torture.

Lee >>




This about sums it up. Either go to sleep, or stay up for 5 hrs and get cracked by a three outer when you're 9 places away from the money at 5:30 am. And people wonder why I try to stick to cash games...

CDsNuts

What's crazy is that I made my living off cash games for 4 years, then had a decent run in tourneys and decided I wanted to be a tourney player. Luckily a trip to the WSOP this year made me re-evaluate my decision and I'm back to cash games. I'll hop in a tourney every now and then if there's nothing going on, but I really don't understand how the guys who try to make a living off online tourneys can play 8-15 a day. I'd kill myself.

Lee

kingraider75

I recall buying 1980-81 packs for 50 cents in like 1990.