Basketball card collectors know 1948 Bowman, the first all-basketball set, but Bowman disappeared from basketball cards until 1996-97 when Topps revived it with Bowman’s Best. These were six-card packs for $3.99, but, like most successful premium sets, there were only 125 cards so there’s a higher percentage of stars. First are 80 base cards, Michael Jordan being the highlight. Next are 25 rookie cards. This is the third card in that subset, the #R3 Shareef Abdur-Rahim. These are part of the main set, just numbered separately with an “R” prefix. Kobe Bryant is the highlight of the rookie subset, but Shareef Abdur-Rahim is a great rookie from the set. The Grizzlies picked him third in the draft and he’s the third card in this rookies subset. But the set doesn’t follow draft order exactly. Stephon Marbury appears second in this subset, even though he was drafted fourth.
These cards felt like earlier Topps Finest and they used the exact same production process as you can see from the patents and trademarks mentioned on the back. But in Bowman’s Best, the Chromium technology is incorporated into the photos more strategically without intruding too much. Most obviously, 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 switch the silver and gold. More interestingly, select items use Chromium for a metallic look. Here the Grizzlies jersey on Abdur-Rahim shines. It’s really eye-catching! The jersey actually takes precedence over his face on this card.
Color and information is everywhere on the reverse. Most of the rookies annoyingly point out that junior high and high school statistics are unavailable. I really don’t think collectors expect statistics from when a player is 14-15 years old. But these notes are still present on most of the rookies. But ’96-97 Bowman’s Best strives to present stats in unique and unexpected ways. Here you see that rebounds and blocks are averaged out over minutes played (the rebounds are impressive with one nearly every four minutes of playing time). “Points per Field Goal Attempt” is another stat that you don’t see very often and it incorporates more information than simple field goal %. This is very impressive for Shareef Abdur-Rahim with each field goal attempt resulting in 1.48 points. But his early entrance into the NBA is explained in the “Super Stat” below where we see that he set a freshman record for points in a season at the University of California with 590.
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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