In 1994-95, sets referred to as “Super Premium” began to appear. Fleer produced Flair, a thicker card with a polyester laminate finish. And Upper Deck produced these “SP” cards, which I imagine came from the term “Super Premium.” Honestly, compared to Flair’s durability, I don’t think these cards qualify as “super premium.” With SP, Upper Deck didn’t produce just one set. Regular SP cards went to hobby dealers only. Then a second set, known as “SP Championship,” was distributed only to retail outlets, for sale in six-card packs at a suggested price of $3.99. That’s not a lot per pack, but the set was a condensed 135 cards, so you’d still probably have a few stars in those six cards.
So, again, SP and SP Championship were two completely different sets. Different cards, different wrappers, different box… This #49 Jason Kidd rookie is from the SP Championship set. The SP Championship set was meant to focus on the NBA Playoffs. It was a short, simple set, starting with a 27-card subset called “Road to the Finals” followed by 108 alphabetical by team. The full-bleed action photo was the priority on the front. Even the player’s name was subtly placed off to the side in a bit of gold foil. The brand logo was in gold foil which ran down the side to an oval containing the team name. But none of this interfered with the photo itself. And the photo for Jason Kidd was well-chosen, he was known for assists, and this is a great pass right towards the camera.
It was the horizontal reverse where the specific set and playoff theme was clarified. On the left, with the brand logo, you can clearly see that this belongs to the SP Championship set. This was followed by a rectangle where a summary of playoffs information appeared above the statistics. Like we mentioned earlier, SP Championship was designed to focus on the playoffs. For Jason Kidd, this summary is really generic. Being a rookie, Jason Kidd’s college statistics from the University of California are shown. Veterans had playoff-specific stats in this spot. Another action photo and the card number appears on the right. The second photo is a really nice feature. Especially on this card where you have Jason Kidd up against Mark Jackson, another great guard of a different generation. So on the back, nice design, but in terms of information, this Jason Kidd lacks substance.
The ’94-95 SP Championship base set never really took off in price, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Overall, this is a nice, classy rookie card of Jason Kidd. And the set as a whole is a great way to own a short, simple set with lots of stars, not a lot of filler, for a great price!
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