At the beginning of the decade, SP Authentic was the heavyweight champion of brands in several sports. The most highly anticipated rookie cards were found inside Upper Deck's top premium brand.
The rise of super high end products has made SP Authentic into a mid-range set and taken some of the glory away from the brand's rookies. Despite that, its release continues to be a highlight of each hobby year, and the 2006-07 basketball edition is no exception.
Boxes of 2006-07 SP Authentic Basketball come with 24 packs of five cards each, with packaging touting two signed cards and one memorabilia card per box on average.
Commons and Rookie Cards
The first 90 cards in the base set feature NBA veterans on a card design that is instantly recognizable as SP Authentic. A primarily white background has a splash of team color in the middle with circular silver elements on either side. The player photos are raised ever so slightly and really pop out at the viewer.
With a relatively small batch of common cards and few inserts, collectors can expect to get all of the veterans in a single box. Indeed, my review box contained all 90 commons plus 26 duplicates.
Of course it wouldn't be SP Authentic without rookies, and plenty make their way into the 2006-07 set. The Rookie Authentics subset includes several tiers of autographed rookie cards (including Rookie of the Year Brandon Roy on a card numbered to 299) and a few regular rookie cards (like Adam Morrison, who has an exclusive autograph deal with Topps) numbered to 199.
I pulled just one rookie, a signed Rookie Authentics card of Trail Blazers guard Sergio Rodriguez numbered 132/999. It should be noted that SP Authentic continues to use on-card signatures for its autographed RCs, an increasingly rare but very nice touch.
Autographed Cards
SP Authentic's Sign of the Times is one of the most well-known and longest-running autographed inserts in the industry, and it is present in the 2006-07 basketball set once again. Single autographs are numbered to 100 or less, with dual, triple and quad versions also in the mix.
Chirography is the other main autographed set, with a checklist mixing rookies and veterans. Still more signatures are available in Fabric Sigs autographed memorabilia cards, which also come in double and triple varieties. The main level of the always popular Rookie Exclusive insert is included below with the memorabilia cards, but it also has an autographed jersey parallel numbered to 60 and an autographed patch parallel numbered to 30.
My review box contained a dual Fabric Sigs card of Golden State Warriors teammates Baron Davis and Patrick O'Bryant, with a player-worn swatch and an autograph from each, numbered 19/25.
Memorabilia Cards
While game-worn cards aren't the focus of this product, collectors can still expect a memorabilia card or two in every box. Authentic Fabrics cards account for most of these, ranging from unnumbered cards with a single swatch to four-player combo cards numbered to 25.
As mentioned above, Rookie Exclusive cards have event-worn swatches from the 2006-07 rookie class. Regular cards are unnumbered, but collectors can pull signed jersey or patch versions with print runs of 60 and 30 respectively.
My box's memorabilia contribution was an Authentic Fabrics Ben Wallace card - certainly nothing special as game-worn cards go.
The Last Word
Exquisite Collection and other higher-priced sets may have knocked SP Authentic down a peg or two, but the 2006-07 basketball release proves that the brand can still offer up an attractive batch of cards with plenty of potential for some decent pulls. The hard-signed rookie cards are definitely worth collecting, both for aesthetic reasons and the fact that name recognition will help them hold value as the years pass.
One note of caution: with 24 packs in a box and only a few hits, it can be tough to open by the pack. Spring for a full box of 2006-07 SP Authentic Basketball if you want to take the plunge.
