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 tallboy cards that Fleer produced starting in ’93-94, but this subset is an earlier 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. And after seeing it, who didn’t think that the DPGA should be found on more basketball cards. 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.
Here’s the #201 David Robinson, our player with a Dunk Rank #1! Robinson stood at 2.28 dunks per game the previous season, but this was actually weak for him since his three-year average was 2.45. Another great feature of the cards was a quote from a competitor. Nice to see players speaking highly of each other in a spirit of friendly competition, and here we have Hakeem Olajuwon speaking about David Robinson!
Let’s talk a bit about the ’92-93 Ultra set itself, because this card brings up a lot of good points about it. If you remember, 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 more than just their base set. We could basically say that ’92-93 was the season of introducing the “premium set” to collecting. Topps, for example, 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 Topps Stadium Club, 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 of ’92-93 Ultra was referred to as “marbleized” in advertisements for this set. Even the “Jam Session” subset kept most of this same design keeping the set really unified. Very subtle differences…the “marbleized” area is a dark gray on these cards, and there is a small gold foil ribbon beneath the logo indicating the player’s dunk rank.
The back of this subset is completely different though. Compare it to the base cards, which were very nice. There’s a horizontal reverse and two photos of the player (one action and one close-up), with 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. The dark gray marble of these Jam Session cards continues on the back a bit.
Fun card that I’m glad we have in our collection! We now have three cards from ’92-93 Ultra, the Shaq and Sprewell rookie, and this David Robinson!
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