Anybody remember the hoopla over the Topps Finest Bordered Refractors in 1996

[pwaldo]

These were the Topps Finest Mystery Finest BORDERED Refractors. Michael Jordan sold for $4800. Other stars like Penny Hardaway and Patrick Ewing were commanding high prices. Anybody know what they go for now? Anybody have any?

[70sbestcardboard]

I remember this hoopla like it was yesterday. I remember the word in the hobby was that there was something like 50 of each player released. But since then I have heard that these are more common than what everyone thought. Does anyone know how many were released? Has Topps since confessed they put these into packs to cause the very hype they wanted to create? I own the Pippen version and I bought it on Ebay for an unfortunately low price. I'm sure the Jordan could be worth a pretty penny but not $4800 pretty.

[pwaldo]

I remember this hoopla like it was yesterday. I remember the word in the hobby was that there was something like 50 of each player released. But since then I have heard that these are more common than what everyone thought. Does anyone know how many were released? Has Topps since confessed they put these into packs to cause the very hype they wanted to create? I own the Pippen version and I bought it on Ebay for an unfortunately low price. I'm sure the Jordan could be worth a pretty penny but not $4800 pretty.

I'm guessing most people didn't even know what they had which kept the amount of report sightings lower but initially I don't think many were made (for the time frame of 1996). Depending on how well this set was selling I could see Topps pulling some stunt like this to drum up support but from everything I heard Finest was still big in 1996. Might have been a test to see how low they could go with the print run because at the time that was the big thing. All the card companies were in a space like race to get to 1/1 cards.