We’ve been working our way through the 1993 Action Packed Hall of Fame set. It’s a set full of history and information, and the physical cards are high quality, especially for the ’90’s junk wax era. It begins with different subsets before getting to the base cards. We have videos on the first ten cards, a subset called “One on One” where Hall of Famers are paired up. We also looked at the next six cards, an NCAA-heavy subset of coaches. And now we begin a five-card Larry Bird subset with this card #17.
But this brings up an interesting point that I never saw Action Packed address. This set is clearly a Hall of Fame set. It was in honor of the 25th Anniversary of the Hall of Fame as you can see from the gold foil on the front. And every card in Series I mentions the year the figure was inducted into the Hall of Fame. Every card except this Larry Bird. And for good reason! He wasn’t in the Hall of Fame yet! That wouldn’t happen until 1998. I’m certainly not complaining about five additional Larry Bird cards. But it’s fascinating that, considering these Bird cards are the only non-HOF cards in the set, Action Packed never said anything like “Future Hall of Famer” on any marketing or wrappers or boxes. Action Packed also had a player-specific subset in Series II, but that was Dr. J, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1993, so these Bird cards are still an exception.
The subsets in this set blend in with the base cards very well. Take this first Larry Bird card. The back is identical to all of the others, except there is no mention of his Hall of Fame induction. Like the “One on One” cards, the only way you know this is a subset is a logo in the upper-right corner. Here we see a gold-foil #33 jersey. Very appropriate because it was this year, 1993, that the Celtics retired his number. My guess is that the number being retired is what inspired them to add these five cards. This is mentioned on the back. This first card gives great summary highlights for his whole career. Feel free to pause if you want to read them, they cover a lot for a single card including his ROY, three MVP’s in a row, and membership on the Dream Team. I do want to point out one thing though. Notice here his 649 3-pointers had him fourth all-time when this card was printed. It shows how much the use of the three-pointer has grown since the ’90’s. He’s now #321 as of the recording of this video. The other four cards in the subset focus around a theme in paragraph form and we’ll look at those later.
Well call it short and leave this card for now, especially since we’ll continue with this subset in the future. But I thought it was important to point out this first of the only five cards in 1993 Action Packed Hall of Fame feature a player who wasn’t in the Hall of Fame at the time! Neat little piece of trivia…
Subscribe and collect with us at Cataloged Clutter. If you want something a bit different from videos looking at amazingly expensive cards, PSA 10’s or box breaks, on this channel, we’re just building sets one card at a time, enjoying and studying each one, no matter how common!
You must be logged in to post a comment.