1991-92

Both the Blazers and basketball cards continued to be hot commodities during the 1991-92 season.

The Blazers signed undrafted guard Robert Pack from USC and beat out veteran Walter Davis for a roster spot.  He quickly made a name for himself, literally - Pack-man.  He had some exciting games until teams figured out that he had trouble making jumpers and shut down his drives to the hoop.

Fleer also continued in its efforts to produce the most garish cards possible.  The large blue boarder obscures a third of the card.  While some of the player picture overlays the boarder, it's still a mess.

Speaking of Walt Davis, here he is pictured on the Hoops card from this year.  The Blazers had high hopes when they added Walt to the roster as it left the team with 8 players who averaged double digits.  Unfortunately, Davis fell victim to the "too many talented players on this team" phenomenon and only lasted a year or so before returning to Denver.

No team card could be more 90s looking than the Hoops edition.  What I find funny about the Blazers version is that it features 4 of the 5 starters - Porter, Drexler, Buck, and Kersey - and then Alaa Abdelnaby.  No offense to Abdelnaby, but it's a definite case of which one doesn't belong.

The second, and I believe final, year of Hoops night sheets.  You can tell the difference from the previous season's base set in that the back of the card is white instead of yellow.  The front also has a darker tint.

McDonalds commissioned and issued their own collectors edition Hoops cards.  They were very similar to the standard 1991-92 Hoops cards but the font on the the players name on the front of the card and the card number itself were slightly different.

Panini also came out with their sticker books and sticker packs for this season.  Panini was an Italian company, and I imagine they helped garner some European interest in basketball card collecting.  The stickers are smaller than a standard card and were obviously meant for putting in the Panini books.

Skybox went white this season, but still felt the need to go with the fancy ball and the digitized background.  The set this season was also around 600 cards since they also threw in stuff like "Small School Sensations" and whatever else they could think of (such as cards featuring school subjects).

Skybox also produced this set of Canadian mini's.  The complete set of Skybox Canadian mini's featured 50 cards, and as the name suggests, they were mini - about inch high replicas of the regular set.

SI for Kids included some cards with their magazine which kids had to tear apart themselves leaving ugly soft edges.  These will never amount to much from a value standpoint but are still part of the sports card world.  Besides, who can't appreciate the lovely spotted red and teal background!

Franz however came out with what may have been their nicest issue ever.  The gold boarder was sharp and the pictures crisp.  They also realized that the cards needed some plastic protection before sticking them into a loaf of bread so this lot didn't come out soggy and beat up like some of the previous version occasionally did.

Upper Deck, who had a year previously opened up shop producing a nice baseball card product, made this entrance into the basketball card world.  This was the premier set of this year and were certainly the nicest cards.  They were glossy front and back with full pictures on both sides.  They also tended to display the most exciting player pictures (check out the Drexler below) as well as some iconic match ups - Drexler vs. Jordan.

As the Drexler/Jordan card alludes, this was the year the Blazers matched up against Jordan's Bulls in the NBA Finals.  It was an exciting series but unfortunately there was no stopping Jordan on his way to a second of six NBA titles.