Oh the siren song of the silvery reflective pack with neon circle and Series II in it. Seeing these packs in our local card store this weekend brought back a lot of memories. There are vivid memories of opening pack after pack of these hoping to pull that shiny little Shaq rookie or All Rookie Team card.
1992-93 Fleer Ultra Basketball was broken down into two series. Series 1 featured cards 1 through 200 and 201-375 made up Series 2. Shaq’s rookie card (card #328) drove the prices of Series 2 sky-high at the time of its release.
The cards were glossy and featured amazing action photography. There were a lot of different image types that you didn’t always see before the early 1990s. Looking back the rookie class was littered with busts but did contain legends Shaquille O’Neal and Alonzo Mourning and some fun names from the 90’s like Latrell Spreewell, Robert Horry, Christian Laettner and Tom Gugliotta.
We picked up 2 packs from our local store for $8 and here’s what we found inside!
Pack 1:
Otis Thorpe Top 20 Jammer, Duane Causwell Top 20 Jammer, Dexter Cambridge Rookie, Gundars Vetra Rookie, Charles Barkley, Kurt Rambis, Avery Johnson, David Wood, Andrew Lang, Dan Schayes, Xavier McDaniel, Steve Henson, Jeff Grayer, Terry Mills.
Pack 2:
Dikembe Mutombo Top Jammer, Tim Perry Top Jammer, Maurice Cheeks, Buck Johnson, JR Reid, Eric Murdock, Vincent Askew, Greg Kite, Tony Campbell, Trent Tucker, Mike Gminski, Sherman Douglas, Greg Foster, Jud Buechler.
Review:
The results of our packs left a lot to be desired, but it was fun to buy and rip a couple of packs. We sometimes get jaded nowadays when we don’t pull any big name/big money cards but seeing some names I haven’t seen in awhile like Tim Perry (!) and Gundars Vetra (who it seems like was in every pack we opened when it was released), make this a fun stroll down memory lane. The cards are still as cool as I remember and the photography on the cards was just awesome.
You can pick up packs in the $3-5 range on eBay with boxes running $85-100. While you can pick up a nice copy of the Shaq rookie card for about the same price as 2 packs, it was still fun to open the pack and get that flood of nostalgia.
We love opening older cards and getting the flood of memories rushing back to us. We hope you enjoy it too! Leave us a comment on the blog or on our Facebook post and let us know if you like these too!