Just because something isn’t rare doesn’t mean it’s not important. The 1989-90 Hoops set appeared on the scene in late October of 1989, the start of all those piles of “junk wax” Hoops cards from the early 90’s! But collectors forget how popular and huge this set was upon release. (Check out this old Pittsburgh Post Gazette article mentioning that people are having trouble finding packs and that the set is approaching $100 in value). People wanted that David Robinson rookie. And the fact that you could see the top card through the packs helped too. Collectors were memorizing the order and chasing that rookie card. It was even being counterfeited at the time. PSA mentions that the Pistons championship card also was being chased, and I do believe the first version with the players was a short print, but it was really that Robinson rookie that drove the craze. So even though the explosion in production limits the value of the cards today, it was responsible for bringing popularity and momentum to basketball card collecting at the time.
The design is classic and simple. Hoops didn’t stray far from this 1989-90 design in future years. Minimal colors and a border representing a basketball court key. And the reverse of the card featured, for the first time, full-color images of the player as well as the team logo. Also, the team name in white on the front uses fonts specific to each team. Subtle, but classy, differences.
The first series, cards #1-300, consisted of all stars, regular players and (for the first time in a base set) coaches. Then, for the first time in a basketball card set, there was a second series that should really be considered an update, just 53 cards released in January of 1990. With the decision to sell a second series update, 52 cards from Series I were replaced on the sheets. These 52-cards are naturally a little more rare and are deemed short prints. There were good reasons to produce this 53-card update. The second series allowed Hoops to include updates on expansion teams from that year (Orlando Magic and Minnesota Timberwolves) and traded players. In fact, you can tell Series II packs by looking at the lower-right corner for a yellow statement saying “Look for Orlando & Minnesota Expansion Team Plus Trades.” It also allowed them to correct some errors from Series I. Other Series II features were an action shot of rookie David Robinson. The 353-card total was a huge quantity at the time…about triple what collectors were used to. Hoops was able to include nearly all 381 players from the season. The Pistons card is relatively rare, inserted 1:75 packs and probably printed separately. There were two versions of this Pistons card because Hoops wanted to add the Pistons logo to the front of the card (but this one was a mail-in offer). Why mention all of this? These were all early signs that Hoops would, in the future, try to cover all aspects of the NBA season in their basketball sets. This was a lot of cards for a set! In a way, it kicked off the race to be comprehensive as collectors saw 440 cards from Hoops in the next year, building to 590 in 1991-92 (that year, Fleer upped the count to 400 and Skybox came in at 659!) One difference between this set and some of the others from the early 90’s was that packs had to be purchased to collect the entire set. No factory sets were sold.
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