There’s a five-card Larry Bird subset in 1993 Action Packed Hall of Fame and today, we’re looking at the second card. Small piece of trivia, these five cards are the only cards in the 1993 Action Packed Hall of Fame set that don’t feature a member of the Hall of Fame! This subset has a gold-foil “33” jersey on the front, a great design choice since this is the year that the Celtics retired his number. The first card gives an overview of Bird’s NBA career and the reverse matches the template of the other cards in the set. But this second card, #18, focuses on Bird’s college career. The reverse features only NCAA stats and the information appears in paragraph form, the first time this happens in the set.
This card, to me, is a reminder that college basketball card collectors might want to consider adding this set to their collections. Purists will ignore it, since it is features mainly pros, but the coaches are NCAA-heavy. We’ve already looked at the John Wooden, Bobby Knight and Dean Smith cards, coaches who never led pro teams…and Lou Carnesecca, who stayed in the NCAA for all but three years. And this particular Larry Bird card is a great edition. College jersey, and great history on the back. We have his uncertain career start where he was recruited by Bobby Knight for Indiana for 1974-75. He withdrew, enrolled in Indiana State instead and played for them from 1976-77 to 1978-79. We have his All-America honors, NBA Draft selection and his 1979 Naismith Award, a year where he led Indiana State to their first Finals appearance against Magic Johnson with Michigan State. (That game had the highest ratings for a college basketball game ever up to that point for obvious reasons!) Great summary, great info!
That’s all for today! Just wanted to make a case that college collectors might want to add this set to their collections because the few NCAA-related cards in it are really great. If you’d like to collect and learn about this set with us, we already have the first 17 cards in our video collection here.
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