... As we have stated in blog #78, a lot of the blank back type 4s were reprinted in 1989 as type 2's. Those are all listed in blog # 78. Starting with 290888 in Feb of 1989 info was again printed on the backs of the poster cards to identify them. It was decided that the poster cards and catalogs needed to contain product code information so all NPC after the 1988 batch of blank backs contained description and product code information on either their backs or fronts.
The no finish line series 290812 - 290816 were reissued in 1989 as type 2's followed by new NPC for 290820 "Agassi II" - 290827 "Aqua Gear".
Similarly the other grouping of type 4 blank backs were reprinted in 1989 starting with "Mr Barkley" 290873 through "Serious Hangtime 290887" (not all, just those listed) . Type 2 issues continued from 290888 "High Flying 360" through 290899 "All conditions Gear"
291884 "For Women Only" was also pulled into the retail poster list keeping its advertising number.
Shown below are the new type 2 NPC and subsequent reprints of them. As stated, type 2 reprints of type 4 NPCs of 1988 are detailed in blog 78.
This is the blank backed grouping so through the decades it has been the most mysterious of the 4 groups. We all knew they belonged in the set but why in the world would anyone issue them without and product code or title ???
Now that this paradox has been explained by KC lets take a look at what type 4 was all about.
As noted in blog 76 in late 1987 a new director was hired for the retail poster program who chose to use a less costly, thinner paper stock and left off the poster descriptions off entirely (cheaper if you don't have to print on the back ). The posters already lined up, i.e. Mike Schmidt Superman, Lethal Weapon, Supreme Court II, Mr Barkley & Earth/Mars) were given product numbers 290870 - 290874 continuing where "Ohio Flyer" left off......and thus type 4 was born...
At this same time (1988) Strange Thoughts (291543) and Hit and Run (291621- 2 poster cards), created by the advertising team in late 1987 were also added to the retail poster list without changing the product codes assigned by the advertising team, thus the 291XXX numbering that has puzzled us collectors for so many years..
They then decided to "back fill" the poster code gap and went back to 290811 for Mark Jacksons "Home Town" in 1988 and finishing with 290819 "Cycling the Golden Gate Bridge"
Again they added advertising poster "Big Guys" 291776 and "Picture of Fitness" (the mysterious female athlete leaning into the Greek Column) keeping the advertising product numbers.
Many of these were reprinted in 1989 with descriptions on the back (type 2) when management turned over again in the summer of 1988.
This accounts for 30 different type 4 NPC's which had subsequent reprint variations. This is all depicted in the revised checklist printed below for Type 4
TYPE 4 290870 - 290887 (1988)
Type 4 TYPE 4 290811 - 290819 (1988)
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In keeping with the time honored criteria set up by long time Std. Catalog of BB Cards editor, the late, great Bob Lemke...we will not add anything to the checklist that we do not have a verified picture of. That puts a lot of burden on our new friend KC, but he says he is up to it.
Where there have been reprints of a NPC in a different type ( for instance 290248 as both type 1 and type 3) those will be listed where they first appear.
Below are the 73 unique type 1 poster cards (including variations) and the 3 that we know of that were reprinted later as type 3's.
Items that were assigned a Nike product code that were not poster cards are shown in red so that there is a clear understanding that those numbers are not missing.....The seven number currently listed as UNK (unknown) are thought to have been assigned to poster cards but for various reasons not issued (see discussion in blog # 76)
TYPE 1 290200 - 290251, 290850 - 290869 (1982 - 1987)
We have previously labeled these early posters as 1982/83. KC's records show the early posters 201- 232 were issued in 1982. Poster 233 "Stormin Norman" started the 1983 group which went through 243 "Sir Sid". There were only 4 posters in 1984 and 3 posters in early 1985 before the number sequence change.
EARLY NUMBER VARIATIONS (highlighted in grey)
We have known that there were early number variations, and KC has added several to the group we already knew existed. As KC explains it a lot of the early posters did not name the player involved and management finally realized this was a mistake so many of the poster cards were reprinted with backside info better indicating who the player involved was. KC has identified 12 of these variation sets through 290225 SILK . Some of them had no player ( no finish line, urban runner, runner in the clouds) and some had a large group of players (supreme court, jam session) so their descriptions were not changed.
KC confirms our opinion that the simpler descriptions (the earlier ones) are the rarer variations
You might ask "What about chocolate thunder ? " You might recall that in blog 6 we detailed that Dawkins had broken his contract in 1982 and the posters were pulled from the market. Thus no need for a second printing of these NPCs when there were no longer any posters for sale.
ONLY 1 K-LORD NPC ...UPPER DECK 1994 SET DATE CORRECTIONS
Lastly one more correction is needed. We have previously speculated that there must be 2 variations of K-Lord sine the 1994 upper deck set listed the poster issuance date as 1986. That made no sense...the poster had to be 1982 so we in correctly assumed that 1986 must have been a reprint date. Ditto posters of
K-Lord - upper deck says 1986...records show 1982 no reprints
Dr.
Dunkenstein - upper deck says 1986...records show 1982 reprinted 1983
Fingers
& Sutter 1986 -
Lethal Weapon - upper deck says 1987...poster printed in late 1987 but NPC in1988
Moses - upper deck says 1984 but he poster was printed in 1981 and the NPC in 1982
KC recalls that this was discovered just pre release and management said something like "well there is nothing we can do about it now"
Below are the pics of the backs of the newly identified variations to confirm their existence.
Lets start with the 4 card types ( we will explain why there are 4 types as the story progresses)
1982 - 1987 Type 1 - heavy cardboard/ laminated /hole on top/ description printed on back
1988 thin card stock - Type 4 - no description on front or back
early 1989 Type 2 - thin card stock/non laminated/description on back
1989 - mid 1992 Type 3 - thin stock / description on front
KC has always called type 4 type 2 since they were chronologically made after the type 1's and that makes our type 2 his type 3 and our type 3 his type 4's.
I will not change our type 1 - 4 definitions since that would make changing blogs 1- 75 way too complicated for me.
but...the point is that we agree that there are 4 types and we agree on their physical characteristics.
So here we go with the first hand history of Nike NPC........PART 1
In the early NIKE days (1972 - 1977) posters were being created by the NIKE advertising department for promotional and point of purchase display purposes. They were mainly posters featuring a product or an action shot of an athlete. In 1978 Nikes graphics design consultants came up with the idea to create personality posters of their top athletes. The first was ICEMAN followed by Supreme court I. After some of the posters became so popular that consumers wanted them, Nike formed the Retail poster department in late 1981.
When the NIKE retail poster department started in 1982 they reserved a block of ~ 50 product code numbers starting with 290200 through 290251. According to KC, 290200 was the retail poster floor display, 290203 was for individual poster cards, 290250 was a plexiglass counter display and 290251 were the counter display cards them selves. Several of the posters were thus produced before the 1982 retail poster program began such as 290201 - 290218
These two groups (advertising and retail) worked independently but every now and then one team liked a poster that the other had produced so they added it to their inventory. For instance, "Battle of Atlanta" was initially used for charity program in 1979 but wasn't added to the retail poster program till 1985
Some of the non retail posters like:
Portland Tower (Sam Bowie 290411)
Smokin Hogan II (Marty Hogan - 290582
Some Sides Never Retire (290699)
Alley Cat (Marshall Holman 290768)
were created by the advertising team and were NOT picked up by the retail department. Thus NO NPC's (see blog # 51)
For a further discussion of posters but no poster cards see blog #66
The missing type 1 numbers
KC reports that there are no records for 205, 207, 209, 210, 215, 216 and 236. 203 as we have already stated is now accounted for. Some or all of these numbers may have been assigned to retail posters at one time. Some or all of these missing numbers may have actually been assigned to other Retail Posters at one time – KC recalls reports that 290210 may have been assigned to "Doubles" with McEnroe and Peter Fleming; Bombs Away was 290215 and 290216 was Doomsday all had retail program issues (the latter 2 due to legal issues with the NFL) but they were dropped from the program before the product file records were created in the early 1980’s. There may be some other sort of documentation out there – like an early order form – but he hasn't found any yet. So, I’m afraid the search continues for a final answer about these seven product codes.
In 1983 they needed the next batch of code numbers but the 290252 - 290799 product codes had already been used by the advertising group for non poster products so the posters were allocated the 290800 - 290899 group of code numbers to use next.
The first 2908XX codes used were 290800 - 290810 for a special running poster project in 1984 (see blog # 65) . There were no NPC for this group. It was then decided that it would be less confusing to the salesmen if the last two digits of the 290800 poster codes resumed where the last batch left off so they jumped from 290249 to 290850. These were used from December 1985 through Feb 1987.
(NOTE: less confusing to the salesmen but very confusing to us ! )
In late 1987 a new director was hired for the retail poster program. He chose to use a less costly paper stock and left off the poster descriptions entirely (cheaper if you don't have to print on the back ). The posters already lined up were given product numbers 290870 - 290874. ( Mike Schmidt Superman, Lethal Weapon, Supreme Court II, Mr Barkley & Earth/Mars). And thus type 4 was born...
At this same time (1988) Strange Thoughts (291543) and Hit and Run (291621), created by the advertising team in late 1987 were also added to the retail poster list without changing the product codes assigned by the advertising team.
They then decided to "back fill" the poster code gap and went back to 290811 for Mark Jacksons "Home Town" in 1988 and finishing with 290819 "Cycling the Golden Gate Bridge"
Again they added advertising poster "Big Guys" 291776 keeping the advertising number (error? sloppy ?)
A new director was hired in the summer of 1988 and she decided it was better to resumed the retail product codes with 290874 and 875 for the Clark and McGwire posters instead of 290820. Was this and error ? or done intentionally ?... unknown
... The type 4 blank backs continued through 290887 "Serious Hangtime" whose poser was issued in Dec of 1988. This product code numbering continued until 290899 "Caselton Rock in the summer of 1989. But starting with 290888 in Feb of 1989 info was again printed on the backs of the poster cards to identify them. it was decided that the poster cards and catalogs needed to contain product code information so all NPC after the 1988 batch of blank backs contained description and product code information on them. Thus type 2 was born !
They ran out of product codes again in Aug of 1989 The next batch of available codes would have been 2918XX and it was thought that that would be confusing since they had just released 2908XX posters so they again backfilled by going back to 290820 for Agassi II in August of 1989. This continued till they reached 290849 in Feb of 1990. In March of 1990 they resumed with 290900 "Nice Shoes" (note no NPC was ever made for the 900 poster )
Starting with 290829 Cycling Storm in late 1989 they also moved to the new format of heavier paper stock with product information on the front.
As the earlier Type 1, 4 and 2 NPC's ran out, they were reprinted as type 3's as the posters were reprinted in 1990 and beyond. We will be discussing that in detail later.
So with what we now know, taking a look at blog 49 where I attempt to understand the chronology of the numbering sequence , we can state that there was no way to ever understand the sequence of issued numbers vs year issued without the kind of first hand info that we are now presenting.
Thank you KC.....More coming soon....
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Last year when we made contact with Nike Mike and the last bits of information were added so that everything made sense, Mike clarified that:
"In June of 1992 Nike starter printing and distributing posters with PSP publishing " It is at this point that OSP started using their own product numbers to track things. Thus the switch from the 290XXX series to the 5XXX series
From all that we have seen so far it appears that those numbers started with 5201 and proceeded from there. Certainly is strange that they started at 201 again, but that seems to be the case.
I always considered the OSP NPC a separate entity and always thought of them as 4 x 6's not 5 x 7's.
I personally have several of the Jordans and other player posters that I thought were cool in my ungraded NPC set (see below) but I certainly am not going to set out to catalog all of these that were issued ...I will leave that job for someone else.
