NBA Oddballs

What card collector doesn't love oddballs? I don't know of any, including myself. In this order from COMC, I made an effort to chase oddballs. In almost all cases, I was able to add only one card from each set. Presented here in chronological order of release.

1972-73 Icee Bear. These are much larger than I expected- it's sometimes hard to tell in scans. The cards are 3x5, and about the same thickness as an index card.

 1980-81 Pepsi Phoenix Suns. This is a 12 card set and I had no idea it existed before I discovered it for sale. Extra bonus: this is the only card Mike Niles ever got! He's a true One Hit Wonder. And he's not the only one...Johnny High also has his only card in this set. It's something I'll have to add at some point. In researching this post I discovered there is also an 1981-82 set, and there is one player (Joel Kramer) who has cards in both sets...but none others. Adding one of them, preferably 1981-82 to get that different set, is now on my To Do list.

 1982-83 Denver Nuggers Police, the only card he ever got.

 1982-83 Portland Trail Blazers Police. I don't know if it's his only card or not, (edit after original post: it's  not) but it's my first card of him. It's also my first card from the 1982-83 season, the most recent NBA season without a major card release. Topps quit after 1981-82, and Star didn't start until 1983-84. There were some promos issued that year, including these two Police sets, possibly others, and a BASF set for the Lakers that is gigantic, full page size. I don't have any of them, although I would like to. This year is very much the missing link for the modern NBA, and I'm thrilled to finally add some to my collection. I've known these regional promos existed since before I took my break from the NBA in 2006, but back then I didn't have any access to them.

 1988-89 Bud Light Dallas Mavericks...a set I didn't know existed until I found it for sale on COMC.

1988-89 Denver Nuggets Police. Not as exciting as the other two Police cards, because there are other cards from 1988-89 and of Jerome Lane in my collection, it's still a regional promo I didn't have represented in my collection. I do wish the Police sets were standard card size, or even 1969-70 Topps size, because they are going to be hard to store.

 Pepsi again, this time across the country in Orlando for the Magic's debut season. This is only an 8 card set, and has no one hit wonders. I chose Michael Ansley because he didn't get too many cards. I'm not sure what the purpose of these was intended to be, but the back has a wide bottom border saying "Glue in this area". Thankfully nobody did that to this card. Oddly enough, one of the cards is the Magic's original Mascot Stuff the Magic Dragon...and as I'm typing this, Peter, Paul & Mary's Puff the Magic Dragon is playing on my "radio"...actually my smart phone.

1989-90 Franz Portland Trail Blazers. Franz has been commissioning cards for the Blazers for years. Starting at least in the Star era, and going until at least the early 2000s. This is my first from any year! Produced by Fleer, the design- particularly on the back- and the cardstock screams Star. The cards were packed in with bread (I think) and the white border is stained because of it.

 1990-91 Smokey Seattle SuperSonics. This is a 16 card set I had no idea existed until I literally paged through every page trying to find oddballs and regionals (before I figured out an easier way!). It includes two One Hit Wonders, in Kip Motta and Dick Kloppenberg, both assistant coaches. Kip Motta, I believe, is the son of Dick Motta, a longtime NBA coach. It does, however, invalidate my first One Hit Wonder post, because Scott Meents has a card in the set, which I was not aware of when I wrote up my post about him in 2015. These cards are not particularly expensive so tracking down the Kloppenberg might not be too hard.

 1990-91 Star Equal Chicago Bulls The Silver Season. I've been aware of this regional promo for many years and now I finally have a copy. This set tends to run higher priced due to the presence of Jordan and Pippen both being in the set.

 1996-97 Sprite. This drink-based set uses the design of the 1996-97 Fleer flagship, but has no foil and a different card stock, which scans poorly. I did not have any of the 41 cards, and so I chose Kerry Kittles as he was the only Net in the set.

 If you collected the NBA in the late 1990s, you remember the NBA Wrapper Rebound which was a mostly purple three-part foldout that featured an image of Shaq flying through the air holding cards while the ground he burst out of is littered with cards...I know I scanned it but it appears the scan was lost to my remote hard drive crash. It was inserted in literally every pack from multiple card brands. Well, I never took part in it...I save my empty card packs. I finally, 20 years later, got the prize cards from that multi-brand promotion. All three brands were represented, with Fleer getting both Ultra and Z-Force into the set. The Topps representative is the most interesting to me because the 1997-98 Stadium Club set did not have a Chrome parallel, I thought that started in 1998-99...(actually an insert, using the same design. Issued as a standalone set in 1999-00 which did parallel the entire base set and inserts). The Ultra card and Z-Force cards also also different from the standard issue, featuring gold foil. The basic Ultra card did not use foil for the '98 Greats wording, and the Z-Force basic issues featured multi-color foil, not solid gold. The UD card is the least impressive, in that there's nothing inherently different from the base card, although I have not checked to see if the image is different.