Topps Finest: Most Prestigious Brand of Basketball Cards

Some of the most exquisite sports cards are manufactured by the Topps trading card company. These cards consist of flashy refractors/inserts that may be considered as the most expensive cards from the brand depending on the player's value. Topps, of course, is the leading manufacturer of basketball cards, baseball cards, NFL cards, and hockey cards. The Topps Company first began way back in 1938 when the Great Depression was around. Topps was originally a tobacco company called American Laef Tobacco which was founded in 1890. Believe it or not, Topps once added caramel candy instead of bubble gum inside a now rare set of baseball cards called Red Backs around 1951. These cards allowed fans to play actual games by mixing them up in order to simulate a game according to www.pjdenterprise.com.

Anyway, Topps released a premium brand of trading cards called Topps Finest in the year 1993. These cards are limited to six cards per pack and they did not come cheap to trading card fans. Fortunately, most cards from this premium set mostly had all-star players. NBA superstars like Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, and John Stockton were featured in this set of awesome cards. By the 1995-1996 NBA season, these cards became very expensive and popular because of Michael Jordan's return to basketball in 1995. This same season featured a red hot rookie by the name of Kevin Garnett who is currently a potential NBA Hall of Famer. His Topps Finest rookie card is considered a gem among diehard basketball card collectors. It can be found at hobby shops from fifty to one hundred dollars depending on the condition it is in.

I once had these cards as a child and I remembered paying a pretty penny for a single pack in 1996. I had both a David Robinson and Michael Jordan card from the premium set and they looked very fancy because they had a nice thick coat of gloss on them. The Michael Jordan can cost up to ten dollars at www.eBay.com, but the refractor version of this card is actually worth up two thousand dollars. It is one of the rarest Michael Jordan cards out there and only 25 to 75 of them can be found in the world.