1996-97 SP was similar in many ways to the SP cards of the previous two seasons. Slightly higher price at $3.99 for eight cards. Still a compact set, with only 146 cards meaning a higher percentage of stars. Cards were still organized alphabetically by team with about five players per team. And after the base cards, like the previous year, there were twenty rookies grouped into their own subset called Premier Prospects. The SP logo became even simpler with just the main components outlined in foil. So many things remained the same…but the main difference in 1996-97 was the removal of the SP Championship set. The previous two years had two sets, SP and SP Championship. SP was hobby-only and SP Championship was retail-only and meant to focus on the playoffs. But in 1995-96, SPx, a smaller die-cut set was introduced. Upper Deck must’ve felt this was enough of a supplement, so in 1996-97, they chose to cut SP Championship, leaving only regular SP and the die-cut SPx.
Back to the Premier Prospects cards. This is the #141 Allen Iverson rookie. Although he was the first draft pick, he is the fifteenth card in this rookie subset. The photos on these cards are very fascinating. The action photo is actually on the back of the card. The front of the card is a non-action and often studio shot of the player. In fact, it’s this photo on the front that makes the Allen Iverson unique from all of the other Premier Prospects cards. Every single one of them is a staged, studio photograph. Allen Iverson is the only card front that is not a studio shot, but instead, a more casual photograph during a game. Another interesting feature of this particular rookie card is that, since the set was released late in the season, there was already information available about how the rookies were performing. This Iverson rookie uses that to its advantage by reporting some very impressive statistics. It reports that as of January 12, 1997, he was leading rookies in scoring and was tenth best in the NBA, and he was leading all rookies in assists and was fourteenth best in the NBA. Extremely impressive for a rookie season! It would lead him to the 1996-97 Rookie of the Year award, of course.
Another interesting fact is that there is a postcard-sized version of these cards. It was a separate boxed set of just the Premier Prospects cards from ’96-97 SP.
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