In 1985 Star put out a small subset that gathered the most recent Rookies of the Year onto one roll of honor — a run of eleven, one card apiece. Jordan, fresh off his own award, sits at the front of it. The company that had just printed his rookie was already placing him in the company of the names that came before.

What makes the card worth a collector's attention is the framing. Most early Jordans are about him alone; this one is about him joining a line — a young star being written into a lineage the moment he arrived. It is a period piece, printed in the same scarce Star manner, and it says something about how quickly the hobby understood what it had.

Already, in his second season on cardboard, they were fitting him into the record of the greats.

Like the rest of the Star era, it was made in small numbers and sold through the polybag network, so condition and centering separate the good copies from the rest. For the completist chasing the full early run, it is one of the more characterful cards of the group.