If you only collect basketball cards, and were collecting in the early ’90’s, you probably have quite a few Classic brand basketball cards lying around and you’re not really sure where they came from. These were overprinted, not very valuable, and they tended to float between dealers and collectors quite freely, both in terms of motion and price. Classic cards were produced before 1991, but ‘this year ’91 marks their first appearance in the basketball market. Classic produced a 50-card draft set focusing on basketball. That’s not where this card comes from. This is from the 1991 Classic Four-Sport set, another Classic set containing basketball cards that year. You wouldn’t know it from just looking at the card. There’s nothing to indicate that it’s from a multi-sport set. So if you stumble on a 1991 Classic basketball card, let’s clear some things up so you know what it is, 1991 Classic Draft or 1991 Classic Four-Sport.
The regular ’91 Classic Draft set has 50 cards, this 1991 Classic Four-Sport set has 230. Classic took their four sets of 1991 draft cards (50 basketball cards, 50 baseball, 50 football and 50 hockey cards) and combined them all, using different photos and minor design changes to make their Four-Sport set. They also added thirty additional cards, five of which feature a one-on-one game between Billy Owens and Larry Johnson that Classic used for publicity. So, if you stumble on a card like seeing that this Anthony Avent is card #157 already is a sign that it’s not from the regular basketball Draft cards. Anthony Avent was the 15th pick by the Atlanta Hawks by the way. Secondly, the border is a blue-gray. The regular 1991 Classic Draft cards have a plain gray border, no hint of blue there. Next, the Four-Sport cards have a red seal with the brand name. The regular Draft set has the Classic logo in yellow font with a green background (like you see on the back of this card) and small text saying “Premiere Edition” around it. So now you can identify 1991 Classic basketball cards without confusion. The backs of these Four-Sport cards are very generic. College stats and very forgettable general text about the player. You can see here Anthony Avent’s stats at Seton Hall. He did play in the NCAA Championship in 1989 against Michigan where you see the strongest stats.
Also a note, there is a French version of this set as well, just in case you’re a Brett Favre or Manny Ramirez completist, better not forget your 1991 Classic Four-Sport French card! More interesting to collectors are the autographs that Classic inserted into the packs. There were 60,000 of these printed and 61 of the players signed some cards, but about two-thirds of these were hockey players. Lots of these cards printed…the production for the regular cards was 25,000 cases and 5,000 cases of French cards.
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