Tuesday, January 14, 2020

Completed Set - 1992-93 Upper Deck McDonald's Basketball

I've completed my first basketball card set, thanks to some recent TCDB trades. I'm getting really annoyed with the whole scene at TCDB and I'm probably done trading there for a while. McDonald's has done plenty of sports card promotions over the years. The first (and only) one that I collected was the 1992-93 NBA set.


These were 3-card packs that came with a purchase of.. I don't know. A happy meal? I doubt I was still buying Happy Meals when I was 12. Anyway, it's a 50 card set and each NBA team is represented. Here are cards 1-9:


This might be my favorite UD design of the early 1990s. I love the team colored stripe leading to the logo on basketball. If this were a flagship set I definitely would have bought a box or two. The extra LJ is available - though one card is scratched and the other is dinged. (Yay TCDB!)


Cards #10-18 feature some of my all-time favorite players. Getting the Dumars was a struggle; I traded for it but the user sent me a Fleer Drake's Dumars instead (he let me keep both.) Let's note the teams that have only one card in this set: Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Denver...


Cards #19-27 include a pair of Nets. Ron Harper was the last card I needed. It has a bum corner and some slight water damage. I'll have to replace at least a handful of these. Milwaukee is the only one-card team here.


Cards #28-36. Charles Barkley must have been in between teams, he's not featured on Philly or Phoenix (and I know he has no issues with McDonald's.)



The Knicks, Magic, Sixers, and Kings have only one card. Here are the rest of the veterans:


Cards #43-50 are "Future Force" rookies:


This is why I wanted to note which teams had just one card in the set. Nearly every team has two cards including a rookie except for the Hawks, Mavericks, Knicks, and Timberwolves. Until counting these I didn't realize the T-Wolves had no veteran in this set.

Unlike the McDonald's hockey sets of today there aren't a bunch of rare inserts/relics that fall 1:100,000 packs. There was only one card to chase, and I somehow held on to it:


TCDB pricing has this MJ hologram listed at $11.50, and I watched a box break video on YouTube where the breaker kept hyping the possibility of pulling this card. It's not that rare, or valuable, but it must have been fun to chase back in the day. Apparently there were some ten-card team sets for the Celtics, Bulls, Cavaliers, Lakers, and Magic. I might try to grab a few of those singles, too.


Have you collected any McDonald's cards, or other food issues?


Thanks for reading!


 

~


8 comments:

  1. Jordan cards still excites even in promotion sets and junk wax era. He always have this aura on and off the court

    As for food issues Denny's baseball hologram set is a favorite of mines.

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  2. I remember this set very fondly! If I recall, I even built the set at the time via packs from McDonald's, as well as getting cards from friends who got them, but didn't collect cards. The MJ hologram was NOT rare, and still isn't. I had six or seven of them at one time, one of which was found in an opened pack that somebody just left sitting on their tray with the rest of their garbage. The regional issues are pretty neat too, I only found out about those when i came back to collecting ten or so years ago, and have acquired a few from dime boxes.

    By the by, as someone who has yet to fully commit to the TCDB, I obviously don't know of the "scene" that you're getting tired of, but I'd be curious to know what's going on?

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  3. Hah! That McDonald's commercial is classic. As for food-issue cards, back in the late-'90s I had a few of the McDonald's hockey cards. I think they were acetate(?)

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  4. Oh cool, wasn’t tracking that set. Pretty cool. I remember the Dominoes Pizza Quarterback set around that time that was a pretty big deal (at least I remember it as a big deal). Cool holo for sure!

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  5. I built that set back in the day. I thought I was going to retire on that Shaq rookie card. LOL
    Food issues were a MAJOR part of my childhood and I wish they would come back in full force.

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  6. I remember these! A neighbor of mine traded me a Reggie Lewis and a Clarence Weatherspoon..I think? Stirring up nostalgia, thanks Chris!

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  7. I might have this set laying around somewhere. If not, I might have to at least grab the Shaq rookie. As for McDonald's cards... my favorite were the 1986 football game cards.

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  8. A fun set and I do like that design. Good post and congrats on completing the set.

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