1996-97 Fleer Sprite Basketball Sets



1996-97 Fleer Sprite Basketball Sets

When a player collector thinks they have every card that was ever made for a specific player, they often find out about other NBA cards that were available in products as part of a promotion or were sold in an overseas market. If a Kobe Bryant collector wants all his cards from his first season, they will need to track down his Sprite card that was only available at a 7-11 in the United States. Those who collect Stockton and Malone of the Jazz will need to locate the Fleer Sprite and Fleer Sprite Australian cards, and that was a card only available with the purchase of Sprite in Australia.

Just as Fleer cards were made for frozen pizza and cake promotions earlier in the decade, the cards in 1996-97 Fleer Sprite share a very similar look to the regular Fleer cards that were produced that year. The card numbering is the biggest difference so there could be plenty of collectors who already own some Sprite cards but assume they are the normal 1996-97 Fleer cards. The Sprite Fleer card also has less use of gold foil on the front.

A Kobe collector could actually get a bunch of different Fleer cards that all look very similar. There is the 1996-97 Fleer #203 card which is his Fleer rookie card. Then there is the 1996-97 Fleer Sprite #17 and also the Kobe Bryant 1996-97 Fleer European #233. PSA 10 graded Bryants from 1996-97 Fleer Sprite have sold recently for between $33 and $36. An ungraded card sold on eBay for only $1.74.

There are a number of cards in 1996-97 Fleer Sprite featuring players from the famous 1996 NBA Draft. Some collectors will call them rookie cards, others may not. As well as Kobe Bryant, there is top pick Allen Iverson, Marcus Camby, Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Stephon Marbury, Ray Allen, Antoine Walker and Kerry Kittles.

The Sprite cards use the player order that was once traditional among basketball card sets, alphabetically through the teams and with teams represented by more than one player they are also listed alphabetically. If a collector sees a set of 40 cards at a card show, with Atlanta's Dikembe Mutombo up the front and Washington's Chris Webber as the last card it will be the Fleer Sprite set.

The Orlando Magic and many injuries were unimagined at the time, and Grant Hill had just averaged 20.2 points, 9.8 rebounds and 6.9 assists in season 1995-96, and as the next big thing in the NBA he had an insert set in Sprite Fleer, as well as card #11 and also featuring on the set's checklist. Hill was a spokesperson for Sprite and appeared in many commercials for them during his NBA career. A Grant Hill collector should be very interested in 1996-97 Fleer Sprite because it means an extra 14 cards for the Hill collection, as he also had a card in 1996-97 Fleer Sprite Australian.

In Australia, the Fleer Sprite set was nearly the same. To acquire the cards, collectors needed to purchase a box of Sprite cans from a specific retail outlet but there were some differences among the players in the set as well as different numbering and no Grant Hill inserts. Spotting an Australian Sprite card among other Fleer cards from the same year is not easy, except for the numbering there is nothing else that really stands out as the front of the card is very similar. The fine print on the back of the card doesn't help a lot, it says "PRINTED IN THE U.S.A." and has no mention of Australia, although the fine print has fewer words and only one line compared to the two lines on other Fleer cards.

There are some superstars who appear in the Australian set that didn't have a card in the regular Fleer Sprite, including Scottie Pippen and David Robinson. Ed O'Bannon finds himself on a Fleer Sprite Australian card, an odd choice as the Australian set seemed to replace the rookies of the NBA with stars with a higher international profile. O'Bannon was coming off a 1995-96 rookie season when he averaged only 6.2 points. Fans of international players can find cards of Vlade Divac, a frequent visitor to Australia in recent years, and Dino Radja. Arvydas Sabonis, Detlef Schrempf and Toni Kukoc have a card in both Sprite sets.

Fleer Sprite cards are very cheap, as collectors either don't know about them or are not interested due to their similarity to the Fleer cards they already own. Assembling either set would be a challenge, although somebody must have done that as the Worthpoint site says complete sets of 1996-97 Fleer Sprite and 1996-97 Fleer Sprite Australian were sold during 2013. The best thing about Fleer Sprite cards is that for player collectors and team collectors it provides extra cards to search for.

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