A Panini Instant basketball tribute to the 1988 Donruss set.
Towards the end of my last post on this topic, I remarked that there probably wouldn't be any more posts in this series in the foreseeable future, as the first (?) set of Panini Instant Retro Rookies based on old baseball designs carried a hefty price tag for the three single cards that I wanted.
Fast forward a couple of years and the prices have come down to the point where I was able to snag one of the cards. There's also an affordable Troy Brown Jr. for sale online, but I'm holding out for a cheap copy in better shape. As for Anfernee Simons, he's probably going to have to wait as long as he remains a starter in this league and continues to be one of the Blazers top scorers.
That leaves us with Gary Trent Jr., whose card prices exploded in 2020 following his performance during the NBA "bubble" tournament action. He was since shipped off to Toronto, where he's been a part-time starter and productive scorer, if not the type of guy you're going to invest a lot of money in his collectibles.
As far as the design of these goes, the player name font on the front is a little off. It seems like they just picked something randomly that would fit and went with it. The backs are, like the '19/'20 (1989) version, a bit sad. There's also no print run printed on these, unlike the later cards.
It looks like they did not make this set again after the 1991 tribute. It seems like a bit of a wasted opportunity, especially this season with Victor Wembanyama out there just waiting for more cards. I get the feeling that Panini Instant isn't very popular, especially in the NBA. In my searched, it did look like there was a similar concept out there for the NFL. I wonder if those cards were more popular.
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