Photomatching a Reggie Miller Card to a Game I Attended in 2001
Posted: Thu Jun 01, 2023 12:45 pm
Over the past year, I’ve started tracking down cards that picture games I attended. This chase has been a lot of fun, and as an added bonus, hasn’t cost me much in the process (other than time…but that’s kinda the way hobbies go). I know of 36 Pacers games I’ve attended, with the majority of them being after 2005.
I did, however, attend the 11/23/01 game against the Spurs. Finding cards that match up with this game has been tricky, because when you search “November 2001 Spurs Pacers” on Getty, only 6 images come up (even though there are plenty of other pictures from the game on the site as well). I’ve found a few Jamal Tinsley and Tony Parker cards that I think match up, but I wanted to find a few more.
Seeing as the game took place so early in the season, I decided to search 2001-02 Pacers and Spurs cards on COMC and see if I noticed the corresponding team in the background. From there, it’s still not a guarantee; I have to match the photos up or find some way to date them.
After a while, it dawned on me that I should also check some of the 2002-03 card releases, just in case any of them decided to use an older picture. This was a lot more common in the late 90s. Eventually, I found one that looked like a possible match, the 2002-03 Upper Deck Reggie Miller base card #54.
Initially, I didn’t see a lot of clues on the photo itself, other than Bruce Bowen in his Spurs jersey. Upon closer inspection, it looked like his jersey featured the 9/11 memorial ribbon, which was only used during the 2001-02 season. I wasn’t 100% sure, so I asked other posters on Twitter to see if they saw the same. The response was a unanimous YES.
This meant the game was for sure from the 2001-02 season. From there, I needed to see how many times the Pacers hosted the Spurs that year. According to Basketball Reference, the Spurs only played in Indianapolis once.
https://www.basketball-reference.com/te ... games.html
It’s not uncommon for card companies to grab photos from the preseason, so I knew I needed to check on that as well. Basketball Reference, for whatever reason, doesn’t have preseason schedules, so I had to use the Internet Archive to look back at the Pacers website from late 2001 instead.
https://web.archive.org/web/20011201033 ... om/pacers/
https://web.archive.org/web/20011127081 ... index.html
While I was there, I saw an ad for the team store that referred to the 9/11 memorial patch as the “Unity Ribbon Patch.” I don’t remember seeing it labeled that way, but after a quick Google search, it looks like it’s more common than I thought. A lot of people use that and some combination of 9/11 memorial. That might be good info to know for future patch projects.
By now, I had enough proof that this card was from the 11/23/01 game, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to verify in another way. The first step was to analyze the position of the patches on the jersey relative to the pinstripes. These matched up.
https://media.gettyimages.com/id/144809 ... gmt2yaWi8=
But seeing as jerseys were often used for multiple games, I wanted to pursue another style of photomatch as well. I found an image of Antonio Daniels that was shot from the same angle, and I photomatched some of the people in the crowd, in both images.
https://media.gettyimages.com/id/512038 ... i3jOPgPXg=
Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of versions of this card to chase. There’s the base card, and the UD Exclusives parallel /100. I’ve been looking for the Exclusives parallel for a couple months now. There’s a copy on COMC that was priced pretty high in my opinion. A few weeks ago, one of my friends in a Reggie Miller Facebook group posted this copy for about a third of the price. It showed up surprisingly quick, considering it came all the way from the Czech Republic!
Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it!
I did, however, attend the 11/23/01 game against the Spurs. Finding cards that match up with this game has been tricky, because when you search “November 2001 Spurs Pacers” on Getty, only 6 images come up (even though there are plenty of other pictures from the game on the site as well). I’ve found a few Jamal Tinsley and Tony Parker cards that I think match up, but I wanted to find a few more.
Seeing as the game took place so early in the season, I decided to search 2001-02 Pacers and Spurs cards on COMC and see if I noticed the corresponding team in the background. From there, it’s still not a guarantee; I have to match the photos up or find some way to date them.
After a while, it dawned on me that I should also check some of the 2002-03 card releases, just in case any of them decided to use an older picture. This was a lot more common in the late 90s. Eventually, I found one that looked like a possible match, the 2002-03 Upper Deck Reggie Miller base card #54.
Initially, I didn’t see a lot of clues on the photo itself, other than Bruce Bowen in his Spurs jersey. Upon closer inspection, it looked like his jersey featured the 9/11 memorial ribbon, which was only used during the 2001-02 season. I wasn’t 100% sure, so I asked other posters on Twitter to see if they saw the same. The response was a unanimous YES.
This meant the game was for sure from the 2001-02 season. From there, I needed to see how many times the Pacers hosted the Spurs that year. According to Basketball Reference, the Spurs only played in Indianapolis once.
https://www.basketball-reference.com/te ... games.html
It’s not uncommon for card companies to grab photos from the preseason, so I knew I needed to check on that as well. Basketball Reference, for whatever reason, doesn’t have preseason schedules, so I had to use the Internet Archive to look back at the Pacers website from late 2001 instead.
https://web.archive.org/web/20011201033 ... om/pacers/
https://web.archive.org/web/20011127081 ... index.html
While I was there, I saw an ad for the team store that referred to the 9/11 memorial patch as the “Unity Ribbon Patch.” I don’t remember seeing it labeled that way, but after a quick Google search, it looks like it’s more common than I thought. A lot of people use that and some combination of 9/11 memorial. That might be good info to know for future patch projects.
By now, I had enough proof that this card was from the 11/23/01 game, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to verify in another way. The first step was to analyze the position of the patches on the jersey relative to the pinstripes. These matched up.
https://media.gettyimages.com/id/144809 ... gmt2yaWi8=
But seeing as jerseys were often used for multiple games, I wanted to pursue another style of photomatch as well. I found an image of Antonio Daniels that was shot from the same angle, and I photomatched some of the people in the crowd, in both images.
https://media.gettyimages.com/id/512038 ... i3jOPgPXg=
Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of versions of this card to chase. There’s the base card, and the UD Exclusives parallel /100. I’ve been looking for the Exclusives parallel for a couple months now. There’s a copy on COMC that was priced pretty high in my opinion. A few weeks ago, one of my friends in a Reggie Miller Facebook group posted this copy for about a third of the price. It showed up surprisingly quick, considering it came all the way from the Czech Republic!
Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it!