[buckunteer]

I have been out of the hobby for over a decade until this year. I have been very active since January and have been focusing on Basketball, primarily 80's Fleer and Star cards. I have recently completed the run of fleer sets and grabbed some awesome graded Jordan Stars and this will always be my main focus.

These posts regarding the Fleer Retro have really caught my eye though. I was out of the hobby after the 96-97 season but do remember some of these inserts they have retro'd and like the look of the product. I went by a local card shop here in NYC and saw a box of this product for $535. To me it seems like a VERY steep buy in for a new issue. I know there are some big money inserts/autos but what are the odds of pulling a nice MJ? I have no interest in modern players, just guys from when i was a kid in the 80s.Is this product mostly the new guys? An even mix of past/present? Worth the risk? Something tells me I'm better off hunting down more 80's fleer unopened or 90's unopened looking for the inserts i remember than this.

One last question then is what post 93-pre 98 boxes yield the best MJ inserts?

Sorry for the long post and thanks to anyone that can answer.

There are a ton of good MJ inserts from 98-99 Upper Deck products since that's the year he retired. Lots of potential from later skybox products as well (z-force has the raves and a couple nice inserts, skybox has the ruby parallels and nice inserts as well). Flair Showcase has nice stuff, and obviously with Finest you can hit refractors, particularly the 97-98 Finest with embossed inserts and numbered refractors.

Personally? I'm on a tight budget, so 97-98 Topps Chrome (retail can be had for $60 a box, same odds as hobby boxes) and 97-98 Bowman's Best (used to go around $55, now closer to $75) are my favs. I've hit 3 Jordan refractors total out of 6 boxes of these products (4 Bowman's Best, 2 Chrome). One box of Bowman's Best had a Jordan refractor, Ewing Atomic Refractor, Pippen insert refractor, Kobe insert, and two Iverson refractors!