>>>***The Hobby Boards Basketball Card Encyclopedia***<<<

[AbraCalabro]

I'll update this first post as the thread progresses, just want to see how much information we can fill this thread with.

If there's anything you are knowledgable about, please post here and make it as thorough as you can, clean scans or photos. Hopefully this can be a help to legitimate collectors who enter the hobby, or maybe guys that have been around for a while, but they're moving into different sets that they're not too familiar with.

* if you spot any errors, sound off.

I'll start off with something that should already be known, but I still see these list and sell on eBay. If you're buying an unfinished card you're getting ripped off. These are oddball cards at best and no legitimate collector applies any real value to them.

1997 / 98 Flair Showcase Legacy Collection UNFINISHED / BACKDOOR Cards

Card features highlighted in yellow are almost always present in the unfinished cards, ALL the features highlighted must be present in a finished card. The items highlighted in red are typically missing, but sometimes only a serial number, or name is missing. Check for ALL card features being present.



Part 1 of the serial number in the example below is the individual serial number, 051 and part two is OF 100.

[AbraCalabro]

1998 Upper Deck SPx

FYI* This is NOT 97/98 SPx, this is *just* 1998 SPx.

What's the difference between Gold and Grand Finale?

Two obvious ways to tell the difference between these two parallels.

1. The Grand Finale parallel has a bottom right quadrant on the front of the card has a golden hue / tint over the player's head shot photo. The Gold does not have the gold hue / tint over the player's head shot.

2. The back of the card on the Grand Finale is hand numbered to /50.

see details highlighted in red in screen shot below.



This is my actual copy, the serial is blurred, that's not on the actual cards.

Another example from COMC, see the hand numbering followed by the print run /50.



Double X The Beast did a great video on this one and it does more justice to the topic:

[AbraCalabro]

coming soon

Which Finest / Chromium Cards go green? W.I.P.

93/94 Topps Finest Basketball

All of the cards are susceptible to discoloration, most likely all of the cards produced at this point in time have become discolored. You can see the contrast in what remains of the athlete's actual skin tone and the discolored portions. It's pretty bad.

Examples from COMC, base, refractor parallel and also the Main Attraction inserts which did not have a refractor parallel.



It's NOT vitiligo.


Compare the cards above to a restored Shawn Kemp refractor:

[AbraCalabro]

94/95 Topps Finest

Unfortunately, these also have discoloration problems. Check out these examples below and compare them to color restored versions. Sad way for one of the Finest products out there to age. Pun intended.

DISCOLORED



RESTORED

Just look at the difference. These used to look stunning.