1993-94 Skybox Premium #45 Michael Jordan

Would you believe this is the first 1993-94 Skybox card that we’ve looked at on this channel? We’ll introduce the set, but first, I really like this card for a reason that a lot of you will probably think is silly. It’s #45 in the set. 1993-94 is, of course, right before Jordan retired for the first time and seeing #45 on a card makes it feel like an omen, or premonition of some kind. I know a lot of you are thinking that because most sets are organized alphabetically by a team’s home city and last name, that this isn’t that exciting. But here’s the thing, there really aren’t any #45 Michael Jordan cards up to this point except for 1992 Skybox USA where he is #37-45. That’s all I know of at least… So give me permission to appreciate this card for a silly reason. I also like the photo…a fadeaway shot with his leg overlapping the white box in the design.

I like this set a lot, Skybox really upped their quality this year. This is the first season they referred to their main set as Skybox Premium, but I think it’s deserved compared to their first three sets. The stock is better, they added a UV coating that really helped with quality. Even the foil stamping on the brand logo seemed to add some class to the cards. They kept the orange glow around the basketball, very traditional for Skybox… On the back, they kept their tradition of placing non-playing photos. If you remember, the ’91-92 Jordan had him doing some kind of TV shoot and ’92-93 had him in a cowboy hat with a colorful ’90’s shirt. And who could forget him golfing on the back of the ’90-91 Skybox. This one isn’t as exciting. A unique feature of ’93-94 Skybox is that they had Jack Ramsay write a scouting report for each player. I bet he was happy that the numbers of cards continued to be reduced. This year, the two series totaled 341 cards compared to 413 for the previous season. Here we have an early mention of Jordan possibly being the greatest to ever play.

That’s all for now, just a simple introduction to ’93-94 Skybox, and why not start with the Jordan?

Subscribe and collect with us at Cataloged Clutter. If you want some variety from unaffordable cards or box breaks, we’re building sets one card at a time and studying each and every one in depth, no matter how common!