Kobe Bean Bryant, a 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers, regarded as one of the greatest and most-influential players of all time. “The Black Mamba” won five NBA Championships, was an 18-time All-Star, 4-time All-Star MVP, 15-time member of the All-NBA Team, 12-time member of the All-Defensive Team, the 2008 NBA Most Valuable Player, two-time NBA Finals MVP and two-time scoring champion. He ranks fourth in league all-time regular season and postseason scoring.
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After a seven-year absence, the 2016-17 Panini Studio basketball set marks the return of one of the most iconic trading card brands of the 1990’s. The 300-base set poses a challenge to even the most advanced of collectors. Split into three tiers, the action starts with 100 cards that feature game action photography. The next subset, seen here, is the Studio Edition and the design is quite reminiscent of what the set looked like 20 years ago. Cards 201-300 include sketch-art photography.
Illustrated on card #75 is the base version of the card featuring Kobe Bryant. The shooting guard would spend his entire career with the Los Angeles Lakers. Regarded as one of the greatest players of all time, Bryant won five NBA championships, and was an 18-time All-Star, a 15-time member of the All-NBA Team, a 12-time member of the All-Defensive Team, the 2008 NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP), and a two-time NBA Finals MVP. Bryant also led the NBA in scoring twice, and ranks fourth on the league's all-time regular season scoring and all-time postseason scoring lists.
In 1996, Topps introduced its inaugural chromium production which paralleled the arrival of the legendary Kobe Bryant. After just a few short years, both brands emerged to become some of the brightest in the business with Kobe's early Topps Chrome examples becoming some of our markets most cherished mainstream blue chips.
To this day, avid Kobe investors/collectors search high and low for these early Topps Chrome Kobe parallels, with ultra-high-grade copies always eluding them. Of the 82 cards in the 2002 Topps Chrome set, the Michael Jordan #CC8 Coast to Coast Refractor leads the trending, but Kobe is not far behind in popularity.
1997 was the last year where inserts in Ultra were really memorable. After the first lockout, the quality of inserts really dropped. There were quite a few inserts in this set, 19 to be exact. This “Jam City” depicts Kobe Bryant who would mostly come off the bench behind guards Eddie Jones and Nick Van Exel. At the time, he was the second-youngest player to ever to play in an NBA game, and also became the youngest NBA starter (18 years 72 days).
Panini announced they had signed an exclusive multi-year deal with Kobe Bryant, and in 2009-10 it was the last year that collectors can find any Topps or Upper Deck products that feature NBA jerseys. The ’09 Panini Update All-Star Patches featured a short list of players including Kobe, Nowitzki, Bosh, LeBron, and Dwyane Wade.
A mammoth crowd of 108,713 gathered in Arlington, Texas on February 14th, not only smashing the previous attendance mark for the All-Star Game (44,735), but also making it the most-attended basketball game in history. Kobe still was able to get the most All-Star votes, and would lead the team to championships in 2009 and 2010, and was named NBA Finals MVP both times. He averaged 27.0 points, 5.4 rebounds and 5.0 assists in 73 games in 2009-10. He was selected to play in his twelfth All-Star games. He won his second Finals MVP award and his fifth NBA championship too.
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