I couldn’t tell you anything happening in the NBA or college basketball today. Once upon a time, I DID care about both of them. As a kid of the 80s that loves sports, it was hard not to appreciate and watch the NBA. Maybe it’s because in my two year basketball career my scoring average was 1.5. That’s per season, not game. Just the names like Jordan, Bird, Magic and Isiah tell you what a great game the NBA was.
I was never a Jordan fan. I always called him a ball hog. That being said, I didn’t know as much about basketball at the time as I would in my teens. Magic was cool. He was a big man that could do small guy things and a small guy that could to big man things. Larry Bird was the country bumpkin, goofy looking white boy. I always had a fondness for him. Isiah Thomas was the little guy. I was a short kid so I always liked seeing him play in the land of giants.
None of those were my favorite player. Let’s just say I was a husky kid and still am a husky boy. I’ve always had a short temper. I’ve always gotten very mad when I made mistakes playing sports. I always have gotten pissed when officials make bad calls. Yes, my guy was Charles Barkley. The intensity, passion and fire that he showed made me think “If I ever make it in sports, I’ll be like him.”
I was listening to the radio at work a few weeks ago and “The Warrior” came on. I can’t hear that song without thinking of Barkley. When I was a kid I had a subscription to Sports Illustrated and one of the “gifts” I received was an “NBA Superstars” VHS. I decided to check out YouTube and see if it happened to be on there. Much to my pleasure, it sure was!
It got me thinking about how I never had a rookie card of his. I asked Matt if he happened to have one anywhere that he’s be selling. He didn’t, but he told me that he had the card below. I told him that I wanted it.
I don’t know a ton about grading and am the first to admit that. However, this card looks in good shape and I told Matt that I might get it graded just for myself. What I didn’t know is that neither PSA or SGC will grade the Star Basketball cards. I really wanted to have SGC grade it because I just thought that it would look beautiful in their slab. It looks like that I will be submitting it to Beckett. It’s staying in my collection so I’m only disappointed because I just prefer SGC for older cards and in this case, a card with a green border.
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Love Star NBA cards, back before the internet and ebay took off, these things were like Bigfoot, people swore they existed but I never saw one, even doing several shows a year when I was in high school. I pick up a lot of them now just because I finally can,lol.
I admittedly know NOTHING about them. I was hoping to get a Fleer Barkley rookie and my friend had this one. I know there are a lot of fakes, but he knows a lot about spotting fakes and I trust him completely.