Basketball card collectors know that after 1948 Bowman, the first all-basketball set, the Bowman name disappeared from basketball cards…until 1996-97 when Topps revived it with Bowman’s Best. Six-card packs were $3.99, but with only 125 cards, there’s a higher percentage of stars, so you got more for your money. The set begins with 80 base cards and that is followed by 25 rookie cards. This is the twenty-third card in that subset, the #R23 Kobe Bryant rookie card. These are part of the main set, just numbered separately with an “R” prefix. Clearly these aren’t presented in draft pick order. Kobe Bryant was the thirteenth pick in the draft by the Charlotte Hornets and later traded to the Lakers. The thirteenth pick, but he is placed near the very end of this rookies subset. Although initially, the cards do reflect draft order very closely, the Allen Iverson/Shareef Abdur-Rahim/Ray Allen/Antoine Walker for example. This Kobe Bryant card is arguably the highlight of the entire 1996-97 Bowman’s Best set. This is the one everyone was searching for.
These cards felt like earlier Topps Finest, using the exact same Chromium production process shown by the patents and trademarks mentioned on the back. The most obvious application of the metallic sheen of Chromium is the border… There’s a wavy border on the left with the last name’s initial, and two rectangles on the bottom finishing the name. The gold and silver in the rookies are inverted from the base cards. The base cards have gold on the left and first name and silver on the bottom rectangle. The rookies invert this silver and gold. But in Bowman’s Best, the Chromium technology is incorporated into the photos more strategically without intruding too much. It is used for color on the jerseys. This produces two types of rookie cards, one’s where there is more white (Ray Allen, Antoine Walker) and the Chromium is very subtle. Others, like Stephon Marbury and this Kobe Bryant, where the jerseys are mainly color and they really have a bold finish on them. This Kobe Bryant has a design advantage that other’s don’t. The yellow in the Lakers jersey matches the gold chosen for the border, so this design is particularly unified and balanced. Definitely one of the nicest looking rookie cards as well as the most important!
And because Kobe Bryant jumped from high school to the NBA, the design of the back is nicer than most cards from the set as well. Usually, the stat box produces color and information everywhere on the reverse. And most of the rookies annoyingly point out that high school statistics are unavailable. But this card avoids a lot of those quirks by simply presented the known information in text format. Simpler and more effective! We learn that he was the ’95-96 Pennsylvania High School Player of the Year. We learn he was the All-Time SE Pennsylvania High School scoring leader with 2,883 points. And, as usual, the “Super Stat” is interesting while the “Super Skill” is pointless. But great information to know that he had two 50-point games in high school with the reduced time. This is definitely one of the nicer card backs in the set.
Condition Issues: The card in the photograph is a PSA 9 primarily because of the border above the statistics on the back. After browsing other examples of this card, it seems that this is the border where the cutting occurs and is the hardest to get in a pristine example. Keep your eye on this border for an initial assessment of the quality of your card.
Extra (What is Chromium Technology): Starting with Finest, Topps was innovating the actual card construction. They called it “Chromium” technology and it provided a unique, metallic shine. What was this technology? I want to draw your attention to a very informative blog post about how these cards were made. The author saw that Chrome printing plates were reversed from regular Topps. So he took apart a Chrome card, looked up the patents, and discovered that the ink is actually printed behind a clear plastic section that makes the front. This section is joined to foil, so think of the card as a sandwich…top plastic part, ink underneath that, then a foil part. To show that the ink isn’t on the front, he sanded the front. It scuffs the card, but no ink comes off. He also believes that the clear, protective coating on early Finest cards was probably used to make later Chrome cards, but the company removes it after printing before packaging. It’s a great blog post and really worth a read! And when you see the patents, you’ll realize just how much effort Topps was putting into this design.
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