With Michael Jordan Fleer rookie card sales continuing to break records on a weekly basis, collectors priced out of Jordan rookie card ownership have turned to his more affordable 1987 Fleer second year card. 

And while the 1986 Fleer Jordan is heavily counterfeited, the 1987 Fleer card fakes are not as common.  However they exist, and would expect more sophisticated scammers to start firing up the printing presses again to try and take advantage of novice collectors.

Thus, this guide is here to help you know the ins and outs of detecting a fake 1987 Fleer Jordan second year card.

Please, do let us know if you come across any fake ’87 Fleer Jordan’s, as your assistance can certainly help us in aiding fellow collectors.

Feel free to reach out to me at chris@allvintagecards.com

An authentic 1954 Topps Hank Aaron rookie card.

With the unfortunate passing of baseball great Hank Aaron, there has been a lot of buying activity with his 1954 Topps rookie card.

There are some pretty good 1954 Topps Aaron fakes out there, so this counterfeit guide will help you avoid getting scammed.

Of course, like anything, even before you read this, make sure you check out our guides on ‘Buying Cards Safely on eBay‘ and our first piece dedicated to authenticating vintage cards. 

As always, after reading if you have any questions on authenticating your Hank Aaron rookie card, please shoot me an email at chris@allvintagecards.com

I typically stay away from writing about cards from the Junk Era.  This website as you might have noticed is dedicated to ‘vintage’ cards, whose definition is still a bit fuzzy among collectors -although usually consensus is that ‘vintage’ is anything pre-1980.  

So, when a reader wrote in recently asking my thoughts on the investment potential for Barry Bonds rookie cards I started to think about it for a while. 

Immediate reaction — ‘eh Junk Era, don’t bother’.   But then I started thinking–hmm, there is still an outside shot at the HOF….so maybe, just maybe some of Barry’s rarer cards from the 80’s are worth another look.  We write about Jordan rookies all the time and it’s from the same exact year, so maybe, just maybe it’s something I need to examine a bit closer.

And so I did.  This piece will take a look at the Barry Bonds rookie cards, and try to determine whether his cards might have good appreciation potential over the next few years. 

As always if you have any questions on Barry Bonds rookie cards, shoot me an email at chris@allvintagecards.com.

Zee-Nut (also commonly referred to as Zeenut) baseball cards were issued over the course of twenty-eight years from 1911 to 1938.  The cards were issued by Collins-McCarthy, a candy company based in San Francisco.  Zee-Nut cards were issued in packages of ‘Zee-Nuts’, which were kind of a different type of cracker jack candy. 

The cards were issued on the West coast and only included players from the Pacific Coast League.  Thus, many of the players in the sets did not even reach the big leagues.  Given the number of sets (25) and the number of cards (nearly 3600)  issued over 28 years, it is rare to find many collectors dedicated to completing all of the sets.  

Most collectors don’t have a lot of familiarity with Zee-Nut cards but some are familiar with the Zee-Nut Joe DiMaggio pre-rookie cards. Zee-Nut cards with a coupon attached are much rarer and deserve a significant premium.

Thus, I thought it might be helpful for collectors unfamiliar with Zee-Nuts to examine the Hall of Fame players (including DiMaggio) from the sets.  Some of the early Zee-Nut cards are super hard to find, so it would probably take you years and a huge budget to try and collect every one.  

At the very least this provides some novice collectors with some more manageable targets, and avoids some of the players many of have never even heard of.

Michael Jordan’s Fleer Rookie card has been on a mind-bending, stratospheric price increase over the past few years.  A PSA 10 Jordan rookie card just sold for over $200K back in December of last year. 

Like anything else with dollars behind it, the scammers have come out in full force trying to peddle fakes for thousands of dollars to unwitting buyers.  We’ve tried our best to educate collectors (here, here and here), but I keep hearing about swindles all the time.  

While Jordan’s #57 Fleer rookie card has seen a monstrous rise in price, his sticker from the same set (#8 of 11) has also garnered a ton of collector demand, driving up its price by XX over the past year on average.  

While scammers have focused on Jordan’s base card from the Fleer set, there are definitely fake Jordan sticker cards in circulation.  

This guide will helpfully help you avoid buying a fake Jordan Fleer rookie sticker card.

PS – If this guide or any of other articles have helped you in getting scammed, please let us know in the comments below. 

In addition, we could always use more reviews — you can leave us a review on Google here: Leave A Review For All Vintage Cards

Crypto currency / Blockchain concept with coin on the motherboard.

All Vintage Cards is excited to announce that vintage sports card collectors can now purchase cards via the All Vintage Cards sports card store using bitcoin.  

“This is a big step in the evolution of digital commerce and especially in the advent of what has become a growing market for cryptocurrencies.  Our stance is that bitcoin is here to stay and that we would like to play our part in helping the digital ecosystem evolve into the world of online commerce.  It’s only natural that card collectors have the ability to utilize their cryptocurrencies in purchasing sports cards” -says All Vintage Cards President, Evan Gibson.  

The All Vintage Cards shop carries high quality vintage sports cards, and was recently launched in 2020, following on years of success in helping collector with a plethora of hobby resources, including numerous resource guides relating to spotting counterfeit cards, along with helping to identify good investments in the hobby. 

I think we all know about the craziness going on with the Jordan rookie card, but of course other vintage basketball cards have been moving up in price as well. 

Still, with a few exceptions (think the Dr J rookie card) the 1970’s era for vintage basketball cards still feels like a bit of an underappreciated part of the market.

Basketball seemingly came into full force in the 1980’s, with the arrival of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, and of course, Michael Jordan himself. 

So, I thought it would be a good exercise to identify ten basketball cards from the 1970’s that look like good investments from a buy and hold perspective.  

Sure there’s been a lot of hysteria in the space (thanks Gary V) but I’m ignoring ALL that noise and looking for vintage basketball cards that I still think represent attractive value and should be good investments for the long term.

So, as always, if you have any comments or questions on any card on this list, feel free to reach out to me at chris@allvintagecards.com

**Oh and note this is in no particular order so feel free to pick and choose off this list**

I’m slightly late on this one, but another collector alerted me to this lawsuit regarding a Fake PSA 10 Michael Jordan rookie card.

Donald Spence, who is a heavyweight in collecting circles (just take a look at his PSA registry here) is the plaintiff in the suit. 

Back in May 2017, Spence purchased a purported PSA 10 graded Michael Jordan Fleer rookie card from Common Cents Coins in an eBay transaction worth $19,999.99.  

I’ve covered the Jordan rookie card quite extensively, both from an authenticity standpoint (here, here and here) along with the investment side of investing in the card (here and here).

We’ve spoken about unopened vintage wax packs on the blog, but I have recently become slightly obsessed with vintage basketball packs.  Knowing that a 30+ year old pack that once sold for no more than 50 cents could hold a treasure worth in the multiple thousands is fascinating, to say the least.

I was buying ’86 fleer packs as a kid, and never did I realize that I should have had my parents mortgaging their house to buy every single 1986 Fleer case in existence to hold for 35 years. 

I purchased a couple of unopened 86 Fleer packs a few years back on eBay before I became more knowledgeable on packs, and know I likely bought some resealed packs.   I’ve also been a part of a few 1986 Fleer pack breaks, one of which a Jordan rookie card was pulled (not my spot, unfortunately).  

When I learned about the 1986 Fleer sequence, I became slightly obsessed with the topic, wondering if a) it might be possible to identify what packs actually hold a Jordan rookie card and b) if those packs could still be found available for sale at a discount.

Thus, this post will discuss 1986 Fleer packs in detail–both the numerical sequencing and the investment case for unopened 1986 Fleer basketball wax packs. 

Common print stain/defects on bird/magic rookie which can help us often distinguish real cards from the fakes.

The 1980-81 Topps Bird/Magic rookie card has seen a huge increase in price this year; for most grades, an increase of more than 300%.

Back in June of last year, we posited that the Bird/Magic rookie might actually be undervalued given the hysteria with Michael Jordan’s rookie card. 

With the rise in value for the Bird/Magic rookie card, there is certainly the potential for more fakes to hit the market. 

In this piece, we review the Bird/Magic rookie card, help identify and fakes, and ultimately try and help collectors avoid buying a counterfeit card.

If you have a Bird/Magic rookie card you think might be suspect, shoot me an email to chris@allvintagecards.com.