Welcome to Cataloged Clutter where we’re making a video for every basketball card we can get our hands on, but mainly overlooked cards…common cards, junk wax, minor stars, printing variations.
Would you believe we still haven’t looked at a 1993-94 Fleer card. So let’s start with this #56 Bryant Stith. Why not?! I mean, which card would you choose to introduce the set? But seriously, it doesn’t matter who we look at for now because we’re going to talk about the design. In my opinion, this ’93-94 set is very important for Fleer because I believe this was the year that Fleer decided their base cards would be known for simplicity. After that discussion, we’re going to return to a topic we cover frequently: What happens in reality, on the court, that creates the dreaded “common card.” And with Bryant Stith, it’s not so simple. If you want to skip the discussion, there’s a link in the description from CelticsLife.com that really makes you think about why most price guides call this a common card instead of a minor star. We’ll get into that in a bit, but first, let’s talk ’93-94 Fleer design.
I feel like this minimal design was a statement from Fleer. Their base cards were going to focus on the photo and minimize other things. Thinking of ’86-87 to ’90-91 Fleer…I’m not saying those designs weren’t simple, but they definitely had a lot more element than what we’re looking at here in ’93-94. But the focus was still entirely on the photo in those sets. But then in ’91-92, it looked like Fleer was going to start experimenting. I liked the cards…there was that blue strip with the little NBA logos on the side and the photograph on the other two-thirds of the card, not to mention the neat basketball court background on the reverse. But here, Fleer started having the photos interact with the design elements, whether it was a player’s elbow crossing into the blue border, or overlapping in other ways. And the next year, ’92-’93, although there was less interaction, elements of the design still had lots of importance. A gold border was added, and the thick blue strip became two small, colored, basketball-textured strips, and these would often intrude on the photo quite a bit. Then, it’s like Fleer threw in the towel in ’93-94…white border, photo, done! The only item of note is the color highlight around the basic info on the bottom (all the Denver Nuggets have this red-orange glow by the way). And to me, this defined Fleer base cards for the rest of the ’90’s.
The next year, ’94-95, looked very similar, but Fleer added a little bit of foil to the info on the front. Now, I know I’m ignoring ’95-96 where Fleer opened up a Pandora’s box with their design. But it really came out of nowhere and was an exception to the trend. The pendulum went right back in ’96-97 where it’s nothing but the photo again (other than at touch of basketball texture). ’97-98 and ’98-99 where we have a full bleed photo with the player and team names overlaid in a way that you really have to look to see them. And I think that focus on simplicity all started here where we see Fleer seeming to say, “let’s just maximize the photo, put a white border around it, and call it quits!” Interested to know your thoughts if this ’93-94 set seemed as much of a design shift to you as it does to me.
On to the next topic: What makes a common card? That brings us specifically to this #56 Bryant Stith. Fleer was organizing their players alphabetized in teams (unlike say, Topps, who placed players all over the place) so we find Stith as the seventh out of eight Denver Nuggets in Series I. Let’s flip the card over briefly. The backs are a bit more experimental, by the way. We get another action-photo of the player overlaid over his last name. But other than a couple per-48 minute projections, everything here is very standard, no extra paragraph-form information. Bare bones…very minimalistic. You see here that Stith, the thirteenth pick in the draft, only played 39 games his rookie season. But this ’93-94 season, things were trending up. He would play all 82 games and average 12.5 ppg. Then injuries started to occur. There was a broken foot, and a broken metacarpal in his hand. So is that the reason this is a common card? Probably not… In 1997, well after those injuries, he was averaging 14.9 ppg. Things got complicated. Towards the end of his career, Stith was upset because he believed that he was being overlooked and pushed out for younger players, which might be the nature of things. Youth needs that experience and they might be around awhile so even a better veteran might get overlooked. This might be why some guides have trouble moving him from “common card” to “minor star.” I’ll put an interesting link in the description to an article about what happened to Bryant Stith if you’re interested in exploring and kind of debating in your own mind why his cards stayed at common status.
That’s enough ’93-94 Fleer for now, I’m sure we’ll return to this set again. A very classic, very simple set of cards.
Subscribe and collect with us! Because we’re making a separate video for every card, we cover a lot of ground: basketball history and card design are just the tip of the iceberg. But the channel is something a bit different from the usual big-money investing or box breaks. I’m having a good time, and I hope it allows you to spend time with some of your cards that have been overlooked too.
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