1995 Action Packed Bill Russell Autographed Card #D1/100 Beckett COA Basketball BAS

WHAT WE FIGURED OUT THAT WE FOUND .... was not just boxes of Action Packed cards that were signed and these boxes were not from a collector after doing more research and turns out these boxes were the actual redemption boxes from Action Packed!! When redemptions were pulled in the packs way back in 1995, Action Packed later sent collectors the real signed cards when the collectors mailed the redemptions in for the real final signed cards that were mentioned on the redemptions. This found treasure is the redemption fulfillment cards from the trading card packs and for whatever reason they were either unredeemed by collectors or the redemptions expired in the packs or they had extra cards signed by the players and coaches or just a combination of all of these reasons. 

After doing research, we found that the Bill Russell card is the set's most expensive card out of the 40 cards in the checklist. At the time, Russell was one of the toughest if not the toughest autograph to acquire of all current and former NBA players in 1995. THIS CARD TURNS OUT THAT IT IS ALSO THE VERY FIRST AUTOGRAPH TRADING CARD OF BILL RUSSELL EVER IN HIS CAREER, ANY SET, ANY TRADING CARD COMPANY...EVER!!! According to the checklist of the set through Beckett Price Guide, only the Russell card was actually limited edition out of 500 signed where every card was hand numbered. When we found these cards in this storage unit, we kept looking for the Russell's limited edition out of 100. BUT TO NO AVAIL. We came up short and looked everywhere online. What we found is this. THIS PARTICULAR CARD LIMITED EDITION OUT OF 100 IS THE GOLD VERSION OF CARD #40 WHICH IS WHY IT'S CARD #40G AND WAS NEVER RELEASED TO THE PUBLIC....ANYWHERE!! How do we know? Well inside the boxes in the storage locker were 93 of the 100 cards that were limited edition out of 100 and there has never been one sold online! We found this to be the case after researching extensive historical auction data we get from a historical sales software research partner of eBay and hundreds of other auction houses! Here is another thing, after looking through Beckett and similar trading card price guides, we found that the 100 was never listed, and they only have the Bill Russell autograph card out of 500 listed because they too since 1995 have never seen one obviously..... it would have been listed if they did!! If you go look at the autographed version of this card limited edition out of 500 which was the only card released to the masses, you will see this card has a different design as it is the 24K Gold version of card #40.  

This  Russell card  as well as the Bill Bradley (Card #37G), Bill Walton (Card #38G) and Bob Cousy (Card #39G), no one knew existed (until they were found by us) as whatever plans Action Packed had for these particular cards we don't know, but they ended up in a storage locker in Vegas somehow after Action Packed went out of business! We have all 4 of the never released Gold versions of the cards of Russell, Walton, Cousy and Bill Bradley and when we found them all, there were about 95 or so of each card. So even though the Russell is hand numbered out of 100 it appears all the Gold cards are out of 100 and not just the handwritten Russell one (since we found about 95 of each of them and no others have ever been on the market). Because Russell has the only hand numbered one, it is most likely Bill hand wrote this on the card to show he was only signing these contractually agreed upon amount and that was all especially since he was the most NBA autograph to get at the time. It appears the hand writing of the numbering on his cards is also in his handwriting as well. Contact us today or check our online store for the 4 gold versions of this set as you won't find them anywhere else!

This 1995 Action Packed Basketball set is a treasure in its own as this was the only year these autographed Hall of Fame set cards were made for Basketball by Action Packed. They are a very early pioneer set of trading cards that included actual hand signed autographs on the cards! They did not do many hand signed trading cards back before this set from other trading card manufactures and from the other sports. To this day, collectors still collect these cards because the style and way the cards were designed as well as being an early on card auto set. They are a thicker card in nature and have a lot of different grooves and dimension on the cards as many parts on the card are raised above the base of the card.

After conducting further research amongst collectors groups, here is an easy way to know how these autographs were authentic directly from Action Packed and not added on in the aftermarket. In regard to the base cards in the set, all of them have facsimile signatures on the cards of the person depicted on the card, not true hand signed autographs. The actual true hand signed authentic cards from the set do not have any facsimile signatures on the cards so that the only autographs exposed on the card are the authentic hand signed ones directly from Action Packed which is what we have here pictured in this listing, no facsimile signature on this card. We are not sure why these cards were never released or what the plan was of Action Packed with this limited edition Russell autographs out of only 100, but we are here to finally let the world see this card in its glory. Very rarely play cards never get released from the manufacturer so this is a very cool card to own and only 100 exist. As we start getting lower in inventory of this card we will be increasing the price of this card so make sure you get it ASAP before there is a price adjustment, and we will not be able to honor any pricing from before when it was lower.