Why a site about the Fleer basketball cards, one of the most niche sports card topics one could think of? The answer is straight forward. A) The topic is extremely popular. One of the cards in the inaugural set is among the most sought-after trading cards of all time. And B) Individuals my age all had easy opportunities to obtain these cards. At ridiculously cheap prices. The wax packs showed up and stole space in the candy displays from our treasured baseball cards, collected dust, disappeared, and 2-3 years later we were told “oh yeah, those are worth hundreds of dollars, would you happen to have any to sell?”
For me the cards, packages, sets and boxes of the 1986-87 Fleer basketball set have consumed my thoughts at various points in my life the 37 years since. I know I’m not alone. Building on those thoughts and obsession, I’ve contemplated the logistics of how the set was produced, how and why Fleer decided to enter the market, what their strategy was after the initial run sold poorly, and other “origin of” questions that have become popular in this day and age rampant nostalgia. More and more, I’m consumed with why there seems to be no shortage of box break videos for that sought-after first set. For something that can set you back the equivalent of a 3 bedroom house, how are there so many boxes available to open?
Anyway, enough pre-amble. My story isn’t particularly rare in the hobby. Anyone that’s collected for a period of time can relate. Life, in general, can easily be looked like the move Sliding Doors…a series of innocuous what-ifs and near misses that can result in wildly different outcomes. But personally, I find that interesting, and am betting others do too.
To begin, let’s go back to winter of 1986. I was finishing my last year of elementary school and lived on a farm. My family did not have cable and did not have a VCR. The internet (anything close to what we think of today) was still coming to be under its development at DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and wouldn’t be a thing for another 10 years. I had friends but did not spent a lot of time with them (at least as much as my in-town classmates did with theirs’). Outside of school, keeping up with them needed a rotary dial phone call, extended bike ride, planned sleep-over or some after-school activity. My parents wouldn’t let me have an Atari, and the NES and Gameboy (which I did eventually obtain for earning good grades) wouldn’t penetrate the market for another year or so. We had no cable TV, just the 3 over-the-air channel options and PBS. (What a treat when Fox came to be a few years later).
The closest movie theater was a 25 minute drive. As was the closest skating rink and Walmart. The closest indoor shopping mall was 45 minutes away. Outside of 4H and farmwork, my only hobby or extracurricular activity was collecting comic books. I had piles of them and could spent hours at the closest book store (also 25 minutes away) leafing through the latest Spider Man or Avengers on the ever present rotary rack. I did not like televised sports, seeing them as something my dad watched and kept me from watching cartoons or the dumb sitcoms I enjoyed.
But, one day that changed. My mom had stopped by my school’s scholastic book fair (one could start another website just dedicated to those) and decided to pick me up a baseball card collecting starter kit. And wow, what a kit it was. It was beautifully marketed package. Glossy magazines that documented the history of baseball cards, a price guide, newsletter and reprint cards of the classics. There was meaning and background, and a purpose. I was hooked. Note the date (October – November 1986).
At that point, I was determined to gobble up all the baseball cards I could. There was only one problem – the World Series had just ended (poor Bill Bucker had helped deliver the Mets’ second championship) and another set wasn’t due until the next spring.
So, I scrounged what I could, not knowing I was in the midst of the junk wax era and these cards would not be sought after long term. My grandpa would drive me around and walk with me to gas stations to see if any of the 1986 series were left (my grandparents lived in the “big” city, population 22K). The Donruss and Fleer sets were long gone. However, I vividly remember Thanksgiving that year him walking with me to the closest gas station to see if any 1986 cards were left over. For November in the Midwest, the day was crisp but not cripplingly cold. We struck gold and stumbled across an almost full Topps 1986 Wax Pack box. I remember carrying home a brown paper bag full of like 20 packs (I think the full box was too rich for me at the time) back to their house and eagerly seeking the top rookie from that year, Vince Coleman. Given the high production of those cards (no other reason they would still be available a full month after the conclusion of the World Series), one can still obtain that Vince Coleman card for roughly the same amount it was available to hobbyists back then (PSA 6-7 ~ $3).
Still, I was in heaven. The memory of that day is still very ripe in my head, the smell and taste of that chalky and brittle gum (I love that there was an obligation to chew the gum, even though much better confectionary options were available at the store I purchased from…waste not-want not I guess), firm protection of the wax paper enclosure, dense composure of the pack until you easily pulled the layers of wax paper back and finally unveiled whatever was concealed.
I was the last one to the table (a Thanksgiving first for me) and left a pile of semi-sorted cards in my wake. That would be the first of many semi-sorted piles of baseball cards I left in my wake the next few years.
Anyway, enough on all that. Recall the date of this memorable event. October 1986, at almost the same exact time I had launched my baseball card collecting hobby, Fleer Corporation released the first mainstream basketball set since Topp existed the industry in 1981.
I was not much of a basketball fan at this point. There was no local NBA franchise and college basketball was a “dad thing” I did not take part in (that would change drastically over the next few decades). NBA games were only seen on weekends during NBC’s game of the week, and without any local teams to root for I was not overly interested.
However, the NBA offered something MLB did not at this point – wax packs for sale. I was not aware there was such a thing as basketball or football cards. I was singularly focused on baseball. However, one day an innocuous shopping trip presented an anomaly to me.
As I stated, I lived remote from just about every modern convenience. My family went to church in a town of around 2,700 people 10 miles away. The town offered some services: grocery shopping, clothes shopping, pharmacy. It also offered a five and dime store, Ben Franklin.
As a kid, Ben Franklin was a fun store. My memory is it was an upscale Dollar General, but reality is there probably wasn’t much difference. They had toys and candy and I think magazines I could browse as my mom shopped. I spent many hours there growing up.
While scouring the central part of my state for baseball cards, something quickly grabbed my attention at that Ben Franklin mid to late October that year. Wax Packs. For a moment, I thought they were baseball cards and got excited, the packages were brightly colored blue and red, similar to Fleer’s baseball card offering that year. Two boxes of these mysterious posers sat among the confectionary offerings in the candy display rack, one placed behind the other in a sea of bubble gum, nerds, candy bars and other treats. I don’t remember the exact first sighting, but their image sticks with me to this day.
Once I realized they were basketball cards, I was like “eww”. There was no price guide for basketball cards, there was no book fair collecting kits, there was no evening news features, etc. I had no favorite players I wanted to collect. Despite being well within my budget, I didn’t even buy any of the cards out of curiosity. I felt anything I spent on basketball cards would take away available money for baseball cards.
Pre-internet, I knew of them, but there was little to no hype. And it was clear most others felt the same way. Those boxes became a fixture in the store throughout the winter and spring. My recollection is they literally collected dust (but that might be reimagining).
Memories fade over time, but I would guess I probably walked by those two mostly full boxes 20-30 times. There were probably times I had $10-$20 in my pocket that could have purchased a significant number of the packages. I could have probably easily talked my mom into purchasing all the packages at about any point in our travels there.
But, I just watched them. “Oh, those basketball cards again.” when I would stroll in with my mom. Disappointment and a bitter reminder that baseball cards were still 3-4 months away from release every time I walked past them. I felt like they were taunting me.
The opportunity still haunts me to this day, but not because of the financial windfall that could have been.
