74. The summer of 1992 and the Move to OSP

 

As I have stated way back in blog #1 the goal of this information site was and still is to catalog the 5 x 7 Nike Poster cards (NPC) that were issued during the time period 1982 - 1992. 

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. 

Well recently I came across auctions for NPC that claimed they were 5 x 7 but were clearly OSPs. 

When I checked back to reread Nike Mikes info I found that he clearly stated that OSP started out issuing 5 x 7 ( actually 1/4" larger than what we are used to in the 290XXX series) . They did this so they could continue using the display cases that were already in place at all the sporting good stores. 

It appears that they started their series with the 1992 Olympic dream team 5201 and ended somewhere near 5366 since that the last OSP 5 x 7 that Nike Mike had. 

**CORRECTION** see below.

Here are pics of the two that I won.

Thought this would be of interest to all of you. 

PSA GRADING

Not much PSA grading going on since the lowest PSA price is now $50 and the only NPC that make sense to grade at that price are the early Jordans.... 

New  Nike Contributors

New contributor KC from Nike has informed me that the first OSP poster was actually 5200 "Summer of ninty-two" Pic below

We'll be hearing a lot more from KC in he next few months as he is a long time Nike employee who just found our blog. Sounds like he has a lot to offer and I certainly will bring it to you.

 Nike J is another new contributor who worked at Nike through this period and has information to add to what we already know. He has already take two of the missing 290XXX numbers off the board. I'll share that in the next blog !

73. Strange Thoughts 291543 type 2 vs type 4

 

Back in blog 47 we identified 291543, Curtis Strange's "Strange Thoughts" as a type 2 NPC since it had no hole, had a black border and had the poster info on the back.

We have recently found that there is a second variation of this poster card namely a type 4 variation with a blank back. 

The two are shown and compared below.  

72. Bo Jax 291621 Hit and Run Found in Blank Backed type 4 Variations

 It's been awhile since my last Nike Poster Card blog. Things have slowed down for two reasons:

(1) The checklist is complete and all we are doing now is making corrections and finding a few stray cards that eluded us earlier in this quest and 

(2) The PSA crisis continues. PSA pricing for grading these 5 x 7s is $150 each and that has completely put a halt on my filling out my PSA graded set. 

Jordan Nike poster cards continue to go crazy. Sellers are seeking literally thousands of dollars for ungraded cards, yet if you check the EBay sold categories, very few of these have moved at those kind of prices. Thus Jordans appear at a standstill. Sellers wanting thousands and buyers offering hundreds.   

There is now a PSA set registry set for just the Nike Jordan cards. Right now Jordan Nike card collector "Erick the red" but he told me that he is also held up because of the current Jordan card pricing and PSA pricing.   Nonet-the-less take a look at his great incomplete set. I'm especially jealous of his (3) PSA 10's . 

www.psacard.com/psaregistry/composite/21452

NEW BO JAX variations

I can point out a new set of variations have been found for the Bo Jackson Hit and Run cards. In blog 47 we detailed 291621 as type 2 cards with identical backs. We now find type 4 (backless) variations exist (see below) . I will update the checklists to reflect this. 

As of now it is hard to say what year these were released. 

71. Nike Poster Cards - Great Time for Relabeling

While PSA is all but shut down to all but the highest end grading over the last few months, I have found that this is a great time to get Nike Poster cards (NPCs) "relabeled"

For those of you that dont know what I mean, when I finally finished the complete checklist and got PSA agree to grade all the NPCs this left man y of us with previously graded cards that had the incorrect year or them or were not labeled as the correct variation. If your thinking of starting an NPC set, that meant the cards no longer matched the set registry checklist. For instance, al the early type 1 cared were originally labeled generically 1983-1985 even though many of them were not issued in that span of years. 

Anyway PSA is now taking them in for relabeling and the good news is that they are turning around those orders in 2 weeks or so...yes, you heard me right ...from the day they are receiving my mail to the day I have the encased cards back has been ~ 14 days.  

Below are some examples of variations that are now graded properly. 

 

70. Nike Poster Cards - 1986 Nike Poster Release letter found

In my attempts to develop accurate publication dates for NPC we have described the tools available such as the poster catalogs that were produced in several of the years, dates actually put directly on some of the posters and order sheets found for several years. 

For a few of the NPC we could not pin down exactly what year they were produced so we listed them with a range i.e 1985-86.

A EBay auction that is currently ongoing for a few dozen of the NPC has a  Nike document included which describes the release of 1986 posters on Nov 12, 1986. This is pertinent to the following NPCs.

While we had Gwynn, Carter, Joyner and Men at Work pegged right on for 1986, This letter lets us put an exact date on the football posters 859 - 861 which were listed as 1985/86. Since the Minute Boll poster is sandwiched in between it also becomes a 1986 poster. 

I will be correcting this date in the blog lists shown in blogs 4 and 50 so as not to cause confusion and will inform our contact at PSA . 

290859  Football - Lipps and Hayes    1986

290860  Lotts Lot - Ronnie Lott            1986

290861 The Judge - Lester Hayes       1986

290862  Manute Boll growth chart        1986

290863 Hitting Machine - Tony Gwynn  1986

290864  Gary Carter                               1986

290865  Wally World - Wally Joyner       1986

290866 Men at Work                               1986

69. NPC - Early Variations

 

In blogs 5 - 9 we discussed variations that exist for at least 9 of the NPC in terms of the identifying information that is printed on their backs . Thought I would show two examples of PSA now accepting those variations and labeling as such. 

PSA indicates that they are now charging $10 each to relabel such cards, but of course that was before the recent shutdown.  We will see what happens to all pricing when they come back up . They claim that will be this summer, I predict it will be late in the fall based on reports of how many million cards they are behind grading.  

Below are the backs. We are pretty sure that the variation with the least information is the earlier prints in terms of chronology.  

68. Air Jordan Hysteria

With all the Jordan hysteria going on and the 1986 Fleer Jordan so called rookie card selling for $10,000 or more in PSA 8 (see below) it was to be expected that the Jordan Nike cards that predate the rookie would catch on sooner or later. 

I'm writing this blog because I hate to see anyone taken advantage of, especially because they were unaware of accurate and true data on the subject. 

It appears that there is significant confusion over what the Nike Jordan rookie card really is. Who better to answer that question than the Nike poster card web page. 

As we explained in blog 15, Jordan signed his Bulls contract and his Nike contract in the fall of 1984. In quick order in early 1985 Nike put out the first Jordan poster 290850 and the corresponding Nike poster card and labeled it 290850 Air Jordan - Michael Jordan. If we look up the PSA population report as of March 30th 2021 there have been 29 graded including (4) 7's, (9) 8s, (7) 9s and (0) 10s

There was also a set released in 1985 by Nike called a promo set which included cards of the 1985 posters of Jordan, Gooden, McEnroe, Lofton and Lance Parrish.  To date PSA reports that more that 2,960 Air Jordan "promo cards" have been graded including more than 1000 8's, 1000 9s and 168 PSA 10s. These are 3 x 5 (not 5 x 7) and are all shown in blog #2. It is probably a safe guess to say that more of these were released than NPCs

So when you see adds like this :

Clearly understand that these are the Jordan promo cards and there are more than 3000 of them graded. Since there are literally 100X more of these graded than the actual Nike poster cards (NPC) (290850) does that mean the NPC should be selling for $500,000 in PSA 9 ??

Lastly the official 1986 Fleer "rookie" (card #57)  in the PSA population report as of March 31 shows more than 20,000 pieces graded with more than 8000 PSA 8s, 3000 9s and  316 PSA 10s. 

This mans logic tells me that the pricing that is out there for these cannot be sustained. 

It also tells me that the best buy in Jordan rookie cards is the Nike poster card rookie 290850 that only 29 of us currently own !