January 2010 Auction

Lot #231:

1994 Fleer Procards #633 Michael Jordan PSA 10 GEM MINT

So you consider yourself a Michael Jordan fan, and perhaps even an accomplished Jordan collector? Well, take a close look at the offered card. Graded GEM MINT 10 by PSA, this is a 1994 Fleer Procards Birmingham Barons card #633 featuring Mike as a baseball player. According to the PSA pop report, you might say this card isn't really all that tough. However, upon further inspection, this card is not the same as the one that usually surfaces for sale. The picture of "His Airness" seems different, you might notice. And that's because it is. Here's the story behind this special card, according to a Sports Illustrated July 11, 2005 article found online in the SI vault, labeling this card as one of the three most elusive Jordan cards of any MJ collection: "In 1994, after Michael Jordan first retired from the Bulls to join the Birmingham Barons, a White Sox Double A farm team, Fleer made his baseball card. But the company wasn't happy with his photo, so it destroyed the 90,000 cards it had printed--except for the dozen or so kept by Fleer employees." The reason for the unhappiness was rumored to be the lack of clarity in Jordan's face and the inability to read the team name on the jersey. Says Oscar Gracia, author of Collecting Michael Jordan Memorabilia, "they are so limited that most collectors don't even know they exist." What appears to be the case is that PSA hasn't recognized the distinction between this extremely rare early variation and the usual card #633 that was produced in mass multitudes; hence the high numbers listed in the pop report. Our research hasn't turned up a single example of this early variation that has come up for auction in the last five years, and the top five Jordan master sets on the PSA Set Registry show a blank next to the column for this card. In other words, no one seems to have one, so if you do consider yourself an advanced Jordan collector, my advice is to jump on this one, because there is no telling when, or if, another example will surface.