George Thompson is the final card, organized alphabetically because they aren’t numbered, in the 1970-71 ABA All-Star 5 x 7 Picture Pack. These dozen ABA All-Stars begin with Rick Barry, the highlight of the set. Other than holding the ABA record for most free throw attempts in a game (30), Thompson’s name is lost to basketball history. Except at Marquette University, where he is a legend! He was the holder of the overall scoring record for forty years and the single-season scoring record for fifty years at that university.
This card is necessary to complete this particular ABA All-Star set, a fascinating set that includes a player who lost on a trip to Uganda never to be found, a playing lawyer, one of the only players to win both ABA and NBA championships, and many other great stories. But this George Thompson card is also necessary to complete your set of Pittsburgh Condors cards. There are only seventeen of these cards that I can think of, fifteen from 1971-72 Topps and the two Condors cards from this set. Why so few? The team didn’t exist under that name for very long. They were the Pipers through the 1969-70 season. Attendance problems led to a re-imaging of the team into the Pittsburgh Condors for 1970-71 through 1971-72, but attendance and financial issues plagued the team all during this time. When the team folded, George Thompson played elsewhere in the ABA while John Brisker, the other Pittsburgh Condor in this set, went to the NBA with the Seattle Supersonics. Point being, there were only two seasons when the Pittsburgh Condors and that exact name existed. And here, in this set, are two of the seventeen Condors cards!
If this is the first of these cards in this set you’ve encountered, you’ll notice that they’re actually just pieces of 5″ x 7″ paper. The backs are completely blank. There’s a nice simplicity to the “cards” which are simple black-and-white photos with the player and team names underneath. Definitely a unique, off-the-beaten-path addition to a collection!
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