60 Type 4 NPCs from 1988/89

 

In  blog 30 we looked at four  type 4 poster cards. Since then new information has become available which help us to place these cards in the scheme of NPC.  The 4 NPC are shown below. 

Supreme Court: the most famous of the four contains from L to R  Sidney  Moncrief, Michael  Jordan, Charles Barkley, Moses  Malone, Chuck  Person, Ron Harper and Alvin Robertson. We previously concluded that it must come from 1986 - 1989 based on their career years. 

The next one is labeled "the big guys and without question is a poster of the "athletics West" team supported by Nike in the late 1980s. 

The 3rd poster is more mysterious and pictures a female athlete leaning on what looks like  Greek pillar or column. 

The 4th NPC depicts a cyclist  cycling across a large bridge (Golden Gate ??) 

The first new info is that after checking with poster expert Bruce Fisher we can confirm that all 4 of these NPC have equivalent posters. Bruce has or has seen all of them. 

Further new info is that we have just acquired a lot of ~50 NPC that have been in a poster card box (see blog #1) for years. They include only type 2 and type 4 NPC from the period 1988 - 1989 and include all 4 of these NPC. 

It is thus logical that we conclude that these 4 NPCs are the missing numbers 

818, 819, 872, and 880 and that they were issued in 1988 / 1989. 

 

59 New Nike Catalogs discovered ; Nike Poster Card Acronym now "NPC"

 Nike poster guru Bruce  ImaPaqRat Fisher reports that he has just picked up 2 new Nike poster catalogs (shown below) . They come from 1992 and 1993 so the 1992 catalog should be the last one that was issued with Nike poster cards numbered 290XXX and the 1993 catalog should contain poster cards that were in the new 4 x 6 inch format and using "OSP" numbers that all looked like 5XXX. Notice the 1993 catalog has written on the bottom of the cover "distributed by OSP publishing" 

See pic below of the letter from OSP stating that they took over in June 1992. This sets the exact date that the 5 x 7 NPC ended. As far as we know today, the last 5 x 7 published is still 291015. If that changes we will surely let you know.

Even though this blog only covers the 5 x 7 1982-1992 poster cards, we know the catalogs always offer popular posters from previous years so there may be new info to learn from the 1993 catalog as well. 

1992 catalog

1993 catalog

OSP Letter 

Aside from the posters that are shown, another interesting tidbit from the 1992 catalog are photos of the tabletop and floor displays for the poster cards (shown below) Although you       probably cannot read them, we are also given the order numbers for these displays. The floor model being 290956 and the table top model being 291013 . If we insert these into the chronological numbers list in tables from the blogs it means that the floor model was introduced in 1991 and the newer table top model in 1992. This accounts for two of the missing numbers in our assigned series. 

When Bruce gets me copies of the pages of the catalogs I will have more to say about the info they contain. Stay tuned.....

OUR NEW ACRONYM - NPC

Erikthredd who is famous for his Jordan Nike poster card collection thread :

Erikthredd's Michael Jordan 5x7 Nike Poster Card Collection — Collectors Universe

suggests we use the acronym NPC for Nike Poster card and I agree, since I'm the one on this blog having to type it over and over again. So NPC it is.  

Hope everyone is staying away from Covid and had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. 

58. PSA NOW GRADING ALL NIKE POSTER CARDS

 

Well the day some of us have been waiting for is finally here. Due to the articles I wrote this past year defining the complete set of  5 x 7 Nike Poster cards that were released from 1982/83 through 1992, PSA is now accepting all NIKE poster cards for grading. That's right all 4 types. 

Bob Lemke, old friend, if your up there looking down on all us collectors I know your proud of me !

That's the good news...The bad news is that since PSA still appears to be overwhelmed with business, they have raised the price for grading these oversized 5 x 7's to $50 each earlier this fall. For me that means no more grading until the prices come back to earth. While some collectors out there are OK spending $20 to grade a 1987 Topps card worth a penny I cannot do that. I have been waiting to grade these Nike cards for a long time and I guess I will have to wait a little longer. 

I did manage to get a few of them in before the price increases hit early this fall and just got a few back.  So here is the first example of the newly graded Nike Poster cards. Fittingly I thought it should be 290201  

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all !

57 Jordan Pop Art 290965

 

Nike poster expert Bruce  ImaPaqRat Fisher reports in with some fresh data on identifying 290965. We had heard rumors that  965 was a "Jordan Pop Art " poster . Bruce , through contact with a long time Nike employee can now verify for us that 965 is indeed the pop art poster shown below.  The poster was  custom framed for Nike.  The frame has the poster number on it, but the poster itself doesn't.  Neither of us have ever seen a Poster Card for "Jordan Pop Art" and really doubt it exists. This does however assign this here-to-fore missing number to this poster even if there is no matching poster card. 

56 Nike Assigned 2 poster cards to the number 290890 Both Mark Allen Cyclist posters

 

In blog 23 we discussed the Triathlete Mark Allen's type 2 Nike poster card 290890 which became know as "go like hell" 

A few years ago Nike poster collector Bruce "Imapaqrat" Fisher informed me that there was another Allen poster card which had the same Nike number. 

I can now confirm, because I have them both in my collection, that this is the case. 

The two poster cards are shown below.

here are the backs confirming Nike assigned both the same number.

This is the first and only instance where we have found Nike doing this kind of miss numbering.

55 New Type 4 Nike Poster Card Identified "Big Guys"

 

You can tell from the complete checklists that there are still a few numbers for which we have not identified the corresponding NIKE poster card. If we look at the type 4 cards (no information on front or back)  we have noted that they appear in 2 numerical groupings 290811 - 290819 where 818 and 819 are unknown and 290870 through 290887 where 872 and 880 are unknown. 

In  a recent EBay auction I have picked up the poster card shown below which is titled "the big guys" on the front lower left. 

The poster depicts some of he track and field members of the Athletics West team. This was a group of athletes that assembled  in 1977 by Bill Bowerman, Phil Knight and Geoff Hollister of Nike. The team also included women athletes during this decade, such as Joan Benoit and Mary Decker —the women's  team won in competition six times: once in 1981 and then five consecutive times, from 1985 to 1989.

In the 1992 book, Swoosh, The Unauthorized Story of Nike and the Men Who Played There, there are alligations that  that Nike  arranged for under-the-table payments to athletes on the Athletics West team, which were forbidden at the time. The book also stated that many athletes on the team used steroids with Nike's knowledge, between 1977 and 1985.

Since we have not found this poster on a Nike catalog YET, we cannot currently assign it a number . Since the missing 4 numbers are all from 1987/88 it is likely that that is the year of issue of this poster card.

 

blank backed

02/2021 Further verification comes from the fact that we have found this poster in the 1988 Nike poster catalog. 

Since it is in the 1988 catalog (which did not show NPC #s) it could possibly be  290XXX - 818, 819 or 880

10/2021 just got an update from Nike poster guru Bruce Fischer who identifies the athletes depicted on the "big guys" poster by finding the following ID on the back of the poster itself 

54 290202 (type 1) ICEMAN Gervin variation found

 The missing ICEMAN variation 290202 Iceman / George Gervin has shown up and been graded by PSA as shown below. Blog 5 has been corrected and the variation so noted. 

It should be noted that similar variations should exist for the other early type 1 poster cards such as 

Chocolate Thunder

Sugar

Truck

Mychal

K-Lord

Zungul..........but we will not be listing them until they are verified