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1982-1983 Topps Basketball & Hockey. What happened?
SoxPatsFan
Posts: 266 ✭✭✭✭
After producing cards for all 4 major North American sports up to 1981, Topps didn't make another hockey product until 1984 & basketball until 1992.
Were these cases of lack of interest, or was there licensing issues? I'm curious if anyone knows. I don't remember hearing much about it back when I was a teen collector in the 80's.
For hockey, I'd be more likely to believe it was a licensing issue as the hiatus lasted only 2 years & O-Pee-Chee continued printing cards for the Canadian market.
For basketball it probably was lack of interest as the Star cards from 1984-1986 were really unknown at the time, & 1986-1987 Fleer weren't big sellers at the time of their releases.
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There was very little interest in basketball & hockey cards when I started collecting in the mid 80's.
https://kennerstartinglineup.blogspot.com/
Topps did make hockey sticker sets in both 1982-83 and 1983-84 so it was probably a lack of interest in the traditional card sets that led them to discontinuing them those years.
Though I’ve never seen official numbers I’m guessing OPC overproduced a bit those years too. I’ve always figured that is why certain rookie card prices (Fuhr, Francis, Hawerchuk, Stevens, etc) always seemed a little depressed relative to rookie cards in other years.