1992-93 Ultra

The excitement of chasing the Shaquille O’Neal and Alonzo Mourning rookie cards brought energy to the hobby in 1992-93. Many companies jumped into the market with not just one, but two, sets. We could basically say that 1992-93 was the season of introducing the “premium set” to collecting. Topps reemerged for the first time since 1981-82 with a regular set and introduced a premium set called Stadium Club. Fleer wasn’t going to be shown up easily though, and they did the same thing. In addition to their regular set, they premiered this premium set called “Ultra.” Like the Stadium Club cards, these Ultra cards were glossy, full-bleed action photos with player and team names tucked discreetly below a gold-foil stripe on the bottom to maximize the photo. The green area at the bottom was referred to as “marbleized” in advertisements for this set. Knowing that collectors would be chasing those rookie cards, Ultra made sure to clearly identify rookie cards by extending the gold foil in the brand name into a ribbon that says “Rookie” below the brand logo.

The horizontal reverse of the Ultra cards was very nice. There were two photos of the player (one action and one close-up) and the prior year’s statistics against a basketball court background. The card number and team logo were embedded in the same “marbleized” color from the front.

Ultra was a nice set at 375 cards, a bit more condensed than the sprawling early ’90’s junk wax. And the two Series were balanced, 200 cards in Series I and 175 in Series II. This avoided the problem ’92-93 Skybox had where Series II packs seemed like they contained the same cards over and over again because 327 of the 413 cards were Series I. Series II was loaded with rookies, more than 40 of them…

There aren’t many subsets in ’92-93 Ultra, but one of note is NBA Jam Session at the beginning of Series II (cards #201-220). When discussing Fleer Jam Session, we think of the tallboys that Fleer produced starting in ’93-94, but this subset might be, at least, the first appearance of that Jam Session logo. Players received a “Dunk Rank” and Michael Jordan was ranked at #16, but it was tough to argue against Fleer. They literally calculated a “Dunks Per Game Average” and simply ranked the players numerically. Well, they didn’t calculate it… As it says on the reverse of the cards, this was already conveniently done in a Philadelphia 76ers media guide.

Individual Cards: