® May 8, 2020 VOLUME 49 • NO. 10 US $4.99 • CAN $6.99 sportscollectorsdigest.com Card Collecting by Joe Dynlacht Collector creates ABA card set Limited-edition set pays homage to players of the inaugural season and benefi ts players in fi nancial need hether you collect baseball, LIVING THE DREAM WHILE TRYING TO football, hockey or basketball HELP OTHERS Wcards, the thought of creating Many SCD readers who collect memora- your own card set has danced through your bilia, cards and autographs associated with the mind. Just admit it! But then, reality sets in ABA may recognize Scott’s name. He is the as you wonder how you would actually pull CEO of the Dropping Dimes Foundation, a off this feat. Maybe you fancy that you can do charity he co-founded in 2014 with Dr. John a better job at populating the backs of cards Abrams to raise money to provide assistance with text and stats than Company X, Y or Z. to members of the ABA family who are Maybe you have artistic tendencies and can experiencing fi nancial or medical hardships. design some gorgeous card fronts. Maybe you Abrams and Tarter recognized that many for- have access to the machinery and expertise to mer ABA players, as well as team and league print the card sheets, and cut, collate and box personnel and their families, were in need of them for delivery. And maybe you have the assistance to meet day-to-day needs because connections to players so you can include an they do not receive an NBA pension, nor were autographed card in your set. You know it will they eligible to receive any other benefi ts take an investment of time and money. But from the NBA. Only four ABA teams were if you can’t pull off most of the other things absorbed by the NBA after the ABA merged I’ve mentioned (or are not motivated to get the into the NBA just before the 1976-77 season help that you’d need), then more likely than – the Indiana Pacers, San Antonio Spurs, New not, the dream of producing your own card set York (now Brooklyn) Nets and the Denver will simply die on the vine. Nuggets. Most ABA players did not receive However, Scott Tarter had some extra pension benefi ts from the NBA after the motivation to make a trading card set memo- merger because they either never played in the rializing the inaugural year of the American NBA or didn’t play in the league long enough. Basketball Association (ABA). He decided Thus, the Dropping Dimes Foundation was a few years ago that even though the venture created to raise money to provide support to would take a village, he’d hunker down and ABA players and families experiencing hard- try to put the pieces into place. ship during their later years in life. 30 Sports Collectors Digest / May 8, 2020 www.sportscollectorsdigest.com and presented the 50th anniversary ABA reunion celebration in Indianapolis, an event that turned out to be its biggest fundraiser to date. One hun- dred fi fteen former ABA players plus many former coaches, media and team staff members were in attendance. Players signed autographs on special commemorative pennants and basketballs (red, white and blue, of course) during an afternoon fan- fest at Butler University’s Hinkle Fieldhouse, and then attended a dinner and Q&A session that night at Banker’s Life Fieldhouse, an entertaining event moderated by sportscaster and Dropping Dimes Advisory Board member Bob Costas. While the reunion was a great success, the foundation’s board (Tarter, Abrams, and fi lm producer Ted Green, who produced the highly acclaimed and ABA-related PBS documentaries “Undefeated – the Roger Brown Story” and Bobby “Slick Leonard – Heart of a Hoosier”) is always on the lookout for ad- ditional sources of revenue to fund much-needed assistance efforts. The idea of creating and selling a high-quality ABA card set to raise awareness of the ABA and to raise additional funds for the foundation had been percolating in Tarter’s head for some time, even before the reunion took place. However, he and his fellow board members did not want to use precious donated funds to take any risk on producing trading cards, so it needed a separate effort. Tarter was up for it but recalls, “I knew it would take several years to get the project off the ground and completed.” Garlich Printing of St. Louis was hired to print and package the cards. Garlich employees He knew he’d need to secure the services of at least randomly insert fi rst-year player autograph cards into separate envelopes that are included a graphic designer, an artist and an experienced within the sets. printer. He also knew the venture could only be made possible with a substantial personal investment According to Tarter, when the Dropping Dimes Founda- of both money and time. It would involve a lot of traveling. But tion would go out to meet with former ABA players in need of he would also make a lot of new friends and hear some amazing assistance, “our calling card quickly became to also provide a fi rst-hand stories from many ABA players. blown-up canvas version of the player’s ABA trading card. But we started to realize we were helping a lot of guys who never THE BRAINSTORMING BEGINS had their own card, and this started happening more frequently. Once Tarter decided to move forward with his idea of creat- I thought that it’s a shame nobody ever made cards of these guys ing a card set, the conceptualizing began. He wanted to be cre- from such a legendary league, especially the pioneers. They ative, but he also realized that he’d have no choice but to design deserve that.” the cards as unique artistic renderings in order to avoid potential Even when Topps fi rst started producing trading cards of photographic copyright issues. He would also need to design ABA players in 1971, it only made cards of about fi ve or six around any potential trademark issues. players per team. As a result, most of the guys who played in a Tarter felt that for the players’ sake and the sake of history, league that only lasted from 1967 to 1976 never had their own every fi rst-year ABA player should have a card (a concept that card. No cards at all were done during the fi rst four years of no card company during the ABA era had ever embraced). the ABA’s existence. So most of the ABA’s early pioneers never Also, the set should involve high-quality card stock and print- had a card. As the memories of that magical and historically im- ing, and come in a heavy-duty box worthy of housing a special portant league start to fade, opportunities to uncover important limited collector’s edition card set. And he wanted to make sure facts about the players and the league, and to acknowledge the every living ABA player would receive his own complimentary critical contributions these legends made to pro basketball while “player-only” set that would not be re-produced commercially many are still living, are also diminishing. or sold to the general public. He founded a company to do the In April of 2018, the Dropping Dimes Foundation organized job and named it Lana Sports (after his deceased “wonderfully www.sportscollectorsdigest.com May 8, 2020 / Sports Collectors Digest 31 Scott Tarter lays out cards for former ABA players to sign. Left to right: Steve Chubin (Anaheim Amigos), Grant Simmons (Denver Rockets) and Julian Hammond (Denver Rockets). Artist Shane Young of Indianapolis painted this picture of Julius Erving for the Dropping Dimes Foundation auction at the 50th Anniversary Celebration of the ABA in April 2018. Lana Sports hired Young to do the unique artistic renderings of every fi rst-year ABA player for their inaugural set of “Lively League” trading cards. 32 Sports Collectors Digest / May 8, 2020 www.sportscollectorsdigest.com The limited-edition cards are housed in sturdy and colorful collector boxes numbered from 1 to 750. eccentric” mother). Then he committed to taking the novel ap- proach of featuring every fi rst-year player who played during the inaugural (“rookie”) ABA season of 1967-68; this would require a tremendous time commitment for researching player stats and facts, and a fi nancial commitment in terms of production costs. A total of 159 men met the criterion of seeing playing time during the fi rst ABA season, but the set grew to 160 cards with the inclusion of Les Powell, a player who was drafted out of Utah State to play that year but never had a chance to suit up. Powell was drafted and signed by the Anaheim Amigos in 1967 but was drafted by Uncle Sam the day he signed his playing contract. Sadly, Powell was killed in action in Vietnam before he could log a single minute of game action. The back of each card in the set (except for Powell’s) contains interesting and little-known facts about every player, along with his statistics from the fi rst ABA season. Powell’s card includes “fantasy stats,” based on projections that assume he had played that entire season. On the front of Powell’s card is a depiction of his Purple Heart medal, and on the back are depictions of his U.S. and Vietnamese service medals. Tarter wanted the set to be accepted by the hobby as com- A graphic collage of the fi rst-year ABA teams that adorns the inside of the box top that houses the card set.