1986-87 Fleer Basketball

With this week being the All-Star break, I've decided to take a break from blogging about my Reds collection and focus on the non-baseball aspect of my collection. I'm starting with the once remaining set I'm in the process of completing. I was a huge basketball fan back in the early 90s during, what I believe to be, the golden era of basketball. Growing up in the Cincinnati area, there wasn't a hometown team to cheer for. My uncle had always been a Cincinnati Royals fan and would tell me stories of the "good old days" when the Queen City had a hoops team. I decided at the time to ally myself with the Chicago Bulls since all the cool kids in school sported air jordans and I could never talk my mom and dad into shelling out over $100 for a pair of sneakers at that time. I came to the conclusion that the next best thing I could do would be to get my hands on some of MJ's cards. Eventually, one saturday afternoon I caught my first glimpse of Michael Jordan's 1986-87 Fleer rookie card at the card shop. I was in awe. After that I promised myself that if I could not only acquire that card but the entire 1986-87 Fleer basketball set I would.
The past few years I've slowly been working on completing that goal. When my uncle passed away a few years ago I decided I would start on this set. Today I'm only five cards shy of completing both the base set and the sticker set. I'm still missing both the Jordan base and sticker cards, but I think by the end of the year I'll be able to get the Magic Johnson, Hakeen Olajuwon and Charles Barkley cards. I'm not much of a basketball fan these days, but it's nice knowing that I'm close to completing a set that thought I would never come close to completing over twenty years ago.