These cards came out of the high-end Flair product in 1998. As you recall, this is a rookie year Peyton Manning insert… These are printed on wood cards and our exceptionally hard to grade as the wood cracks slightly, but they’re still hard to find. Think of them as rare, if not more rare than the jambalaya insert set in basketball. They’re super cool in-hand and you don’t see many out there at show tables or on the open market.

The 1996 Flair row 0 Kobe Bryant rookie. It’s in a high grade, I can’t believe the centering of this borderless card is really what’s keeping it from a gentleman 9.5! I consider this to be one of his best rookie cards along with the EX-2000 rookie. It’s speckled and sparkling background really shine in hand. I have the entire 90 card row 0 set from this year, including the Jordan which I posted earlier.

Once Flair basketball cards came out, they were the first seemingly ultra premium cards. Each pack was in fact a little cardboard box that contained 3 to 5 cards. Even the cards were further sealed in cellophane wrap. Flair had a row 2, row 1, and row 0 cards Along with inserts. Row 0 being a 90 card set with a high-gloss and the speckled background that you see here. I think the row 0 set was the prettiest set that’s ever been made. I was able to collect the entire row 0 set from this year, capturing the Jordan, Kobe rookie, Iverson rookie, and all the rest of the stars of that generation. The pictures of this just don’t justice because when you hold them in hand, they literally sparkle.

One of my favorite parts of collecting is getting cool numbered parallels of my favorite player from my childhood collecting era.