The Jumpman logo is unmistakable.  The silhouette of a man flying through the air, legs spread apart, and a ball attached to his hand. The logo has been seen on shoes for two and a half decades, and nowadays  you can find the logo on just about anything associated with Michael Jordan.

Jordan’s likeness is one that has deep roots in our society.  Whether you’re a card collector or a shoe collector, or merely a sports fan, the logo means a lot. In many ways, it transcends sport and holds a special place in pop culture and even business.

Nike began using the logo in 1985 to help promote the Jordan brand of shoes.  And while promoting the line of shoes, they also used the pose on Jordan’s 1985 Nike promotion post card.

The set featured five cards of players/athletes from differed sports.  Lance Parish and Dwight Gooden were highlighted for baseball, John McEnroe for tennis, and James Lofton for football.  But they all pale in comparison to basketball’s representative — Michael Jordan.

The Jordan Nike card represents a cool and affordable rookie-year collectible for the sport’s greatest player, and perhaps one of the most successful people of the last half decade.

But like his 1986-1987 Fleer rookie, the Nike card is highly counterfeited, which I suspect is part of the reason why the card’s value is relatively low.  The Nike Jordan books at $50 while the Fleer rookie books at $800.  Raw copies of both are erratic in pricing because the real cards are outnumbered by the fakes.  But when the cards are authenticated they carry a nice premium regardless of condition.

I purchased my Nike Jordan as part of a five-card set for less than the price of two retail packs of any recent  product.  Card must be fake then, right?  Not necessarily.  The auction title was ridiculously horrible — no mention of Jordan in the title.  I was a bit skeptical, but with my buy-in price I was willing to take the gamble. And when the cards arrived in hand and I was able to examine them all, I think I’ve got the real thing.

This entry was posted on June 8, 2011 at 6:51 am and is filed under Newspaperman with tags Air Jordan, baseball cards, Jumpman, Michael Jordan, Michael Jordan rookie, Nike, sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.