When we think of early ’90’s Classic cards, we usually think of the overproduced base sets… If you’re like me, you had a lot of these in your collection and you’re not really sure where they came from. “I don’t recall buying these, but now there’s about a hundred in this shoebox!” But if you really dig into Classic, there are some really enjoyable cards to be found.
For basketball card collectors, 1992 brought the regular Classic draft picks set, but there are also basketball cards in the Classic Four-Sport set. This Shaquille O’Neal is very similar in design to the 1992 Classic Four-Sport base set, but it’s actually from a small 25-card insert set…the 1992 Classic Four-Sport LP’s. What makes these Limited Prints different in design is the use of gold-foil on the left-side of the card, an “LP” prefix above the card number, and more gold foil revealing the production number where it says “One of 46,080” on the front. An odd choice for a production number… If anyone knows how they settled on that, I’d love to know! Again, this is a four-sport set, so the basketball cards in the LP’s are numbers 8-14.
There’s a lot of text on the back, but it’s entertaining writing. Shaq’s dominance in the NCAA is shown where it says “He left LSU a year early to escape double and sometimes triple team defenses…” And the last sentence comparing him to NBA legends is powerful. Remember, when this card was produced, he hadn’t played a single game yet!
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