News
Unopened 1986-87 Fleer Basketball case fetches nearly $1.8 million
The unopened case of 1986-87 Fleer Basketball, described as the holy grail of modern items and possibly the only one left in the hobby, sold for $1,789,717 during the Summer Auction by Collect Auctions.
There were 13 bids for the prized item; the bidding ended Thursday night.
What made the case enticing was that the 1986-87 Fleer set features the Michael Jordan rookie card, and “this case will yield around 40 of them,” Collect Auctions stated.
Other star rookies include Danny Ainge, Charles Barkley, Clyde Drexler, Joe Dumars, Patrick Ewing, Karl Malone, Chris Mullin, Hakeem Olajuwon, Isiah Thomas, Dominique Wilkins and James Worthy.
Modern stars include Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
“The prospects of this one can’t be overstated,” the auction house said. “Single boxes sell for $100,000 and those aren’t from a sealed case.”
The case has 12 wax boxes with 36 packs each. The minimum bid was $250,000.
In other sales, a 1987-88 Fleer Basketball Wax Box Sealed Case fetched $156,839; a 1988-89 Fleer Basketball Wax Box Sealed Case sold for $58,121; a 1969-70 Topps Basketball Complete PSA 8 Graded set, No. 20 on the PSA Registry, fetched $37,405; a 1971 Topps Winners Complete BVG-Graded Set (19) featuring kids who entered a contest to be on a card was sold for $35,579; a 1973 Topps Baseball Cello Box (24) got $31,861; a 1980-81 Topps Basketball Wax Box (36) went for $22,909; and the top two trading cards, a 1921 E121 American Caramel Babe Ruth “Series of 80” PSA 2 and a 1933 Sport Kings Ty Cobb No. 1 SGC 8.5, sold for $20,060 apiece.
