Placing it in Context: The 1980-81 Topps basketball card set is odd in many ways. The complete cards are a standard 2.5 x 3.5 inches, but each card was perforated to contain three smaller cards within it. The idea, strongly implied by those perforations, was to detach and collect the set of smaller cards. (Modern-day collectors are shuddering)! Some mini-cards even have checklists on the back that list the individual panels. I’m pretty sure that this is the first time in history that multiplayer cards were produced with the intent of separating the individual players.
There are 264 different mini-panels that were printed on two different large uncut sheets (which can still be found for sale today). Each of these sheets contained half of the complete set of mini-panels. And that half-set was printed twice on a single sheet. But…the order was changed for that second printing on the sheet. This explains why each individual mini-panel appears in two different combinations in the set! In the end, these two large sheets yielded 176 different “three-card” cards. So a lot of the mini-panels repeat themselves within these 176 larger cards. For example, the #34 Larry Bird panel in the famous Bird/Erving/Johnson card can also be found on another card combined with Bill Cartwright and John Drew. The numbering skipped around on the larger cards, so creating an orderly checklist seems impossible. But when the mini-panels are ordered numerically, they create subsets and individual team sets. For example, All Stars are found on panels 1-18, Team Leaders cards appear within their respective team sets and Slam Dunk cards are found at the end. I prefer to order the complete cards low-to-high based on the number of the left panel within the main card. I think it’s the clearest way to prevent skipping a card. But there is also a numbering found in traditional printed price guides and databases based on these older guides. That number will be included in parentheses. A chaotic set for sure, but fun to collect!
1980-81 Topps Bird/Erving/Johnson Reverse
Obviously, the grade of the card depends on the main card being intact with all three panels present. Separate panels can be found and collected and, although enjoyable to finally see the panels in numerical order, they have limited value. There are many rookie highlights including Bill Cartwright, Sidney Moncreif and Maurice Cheeks. But the true highlight is the #34/#174/#139 combo of Larry Bird, Julius Erving and Magic Johnson. This is considered the rookie card for BOTH Larry Bird and Magic Johnson (and who’s going to complain about adding Dr. J to the mix)! Unfortunately, print marks are very common with this card and others in the set.
The cards weren’t very hard to come by back when they were released. Topps was still focusing their marketing on youth and, for 25 cents a pack, you could really stock up on them. Eight cards were in each pack in addition to a team poster (there were seventeen of these). And knowing the current value of these cards in high grades, who doesn’t wish they would’ve stocked up!
The Card: Back to the sixth card of the set, the #34/#174/#139 Bird/Erving/Johnson, is not only the highlight of the set, but one of the most recognizable cards in the hobby! See this article of one selling for over $74,000. Think that’s expensive? Another topped six figures…see this article. And who would argue with its status. Rookie cards of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson complemented by one of the all-time greats in Julius Erving. The Julius Erving is part of the Team Leaders subset (in this case, the scoring leaders of the Philadelphia 76ers). His points per game for the 1979-80 season is printed on the front of the card. There’s no explicit indication for what this number is, but it’s not too hard to guess. It is interesting to see that, at the time of printing, Dr. J was 10th on the list of scoring leaders. Obviously he’d work his way up quite a bit higher over the years.
As I mentioned earlier, the same mini-panel appears on another card in the set. The same #34 Larry Bird panel appears later with Bill Cartwright and John Drew. The Magic Johnson #139 panel appears with this same Dr. J and Jan van Breda Kolff.
As mentioned in the description of the set, print marks are very common on the Bird/Erving/Johnson card. One of the most well known print marks is a little black dash at the bottom-right of the Magic Johnson card. You can see it in the photo above. High grades can be achieved despite this mark because it is so common. Fortunately, this card is not a frequent counterfeit, although some are out there. Here is a discussion of locating them along with one where the perforations were not present! It also discusses the “Stupid Upshaw” counterfeit where “Stupid Upshaw” replaced Dr. J’s name on the back of the card.
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