1995-96 Skybox Premium Lottery Exchange #5 Kevin Garnett

You can’t fully understand this card without reading…This link about about the 1995-96 Skybox Premium Lottery Exchange complete set.  Seriously, lots to learn in that link…see the original packaging, mailing envelope, the exchange cards!  A must read!

The Card: The #5 Kevin Garnett rookie card is the highlight of the  1995-96 Skybox Lottery Exchange set.   Garnett was, of course, the fifth player selected in the 1995 NBA Draft, hence his position in the set.  The green background contains nine floating “5”s (some partial), although the designers missed an opportunity here…why not five “5”s in the background?

In the 2001 Standard Catalog of Basketball Cards, it’s value was listed at $12.00 with the next highest card listed at $8.00 (Damon Stoudamire).  The price has stayed quite stable depending on the card’s condition, although they sometimes take a while to sell.  There are plenty on the market, but nearly all exceed $2.50 in price no matter the condition.

Obtaining the cards: If you were lucky enough to come across three different exchange cards while collecting 1995-96 Skybox basketball cards, you could redeem them for the 1995-96 Skybox Premium Lottery Exchange set.  These exchange cards were placed into Series One packs at an overall rate of 1:40.  Factor in the fact that you needed to find all three exchange cards, and you can see that this set wasn’t so simple to get.  The fine print on the back of the exchange cards places odds for completing the task, or winning by an optional postcard entry, at 1:220  The deadline for the exchange was June 15, 1996.  You would later receive the set in an envelope similar to the one pictured below.

Envelope if collector chose the Certified Mail option!
Back of certified mail envelope…durable cardboard!

In Short: In my opinion, this card is undervalued! Do you remember what it took to get one of these sets? First you needed all three exchange cards. This first one was 1:40 packs, same with the second, and again with the third. But you better hope that in that 1:40 packs per exchange card you don’t get doubles! Skybox put the odds at accomplishing this, or winning a set by postcard entry, at 1:220. If you were lucky, they would arrive in the mail in this envelope. You often see these for only a few dollars more than typical base rookies. Yes, there’s 25,000 of them, but this card was still a whole different level of difficulty over the standard rookies from this year. Subscribe and collect with us at Cataloged Clutter. We’re trying to learn as much as we can about every card we come across, no matter how common!