Many of us have some of these Bleachers 23KT Gold cards in our collections. If you haven’t seen them, they were made by attaching two thin sheets of gold to a cardboard insert. But they’re not really sought after and have limited value for a variety of reasons. They are chaotic to collect and it’s hard to find an organized source of information for them. First, although the cards were produced by Bleachers, different companies gave license for the production. So there’s some confusion there…is this a card from Classic, a Fleer card, a Bleachers card? Second, they were produced over a span of years starting in 1994, so they’re sort of an ongoing set. Third, variations in design and box design exist. Some of us bought one of these in a different box and ended up disappointed realizing it was the exact same card. Finally, they issued them at various times when opportunities arose instead of having a fixed set each year. The Bulls won 72 games for a new record? Off to the presses for some more cards. Finally, the gold doesn’t matter too much. There is a COA associated with a Pippen/Rodman card that mentions 17 square inches of gold, but square inches measure of two- dimensional area. The gold could still be very, very, very thin. So believe it or not, the gold is kind of irrelevant in terms of value.
I still think these are very fun cards for a collection, and they’re reasonably priced, so as we look at them, we’ll try to simplify and clarify things. On the site, if they were produced by Bleachers, they will all be grouped under “Bleachers” regardless of the licensing company. I’ll alphabetize them regardless of the year of production, so we’ll have one complete, ongoing list. And we’ll also identify and list variations separately whether it’s a variation in the box or printing.
A complete Bleachers 23KT Gold card usually consists of a card, an acrylic holder, a small plastic bag, a certificate of authenticity and the cardboard box. It’s obviously the card and box that are of most concern to collectors, and the boxes are sometimes hard to find. The card was serial numbered. Sometimes there would be a printed total amount on the card itself, other times only the serial number would appear.
Let’s talk about the box! There are two different boxes associated with this card. I’m calling this the “Pippen/Rodman” box since that’s the order the names appear on this variation. The front features the players in their warm-ups and there are profile pics on the back, Rodman with a towel draped over his head. In my opinion, this is the more interesting box because it has four photos total. We will discuss this card a second time because there is an alternate box, and again, being aware of box variations is important when building this set.
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