For four years after the 1957–58 Topps set, the one that holds Bill Russell's rookie card, there was no new basketball set at all. Fleer ended the gap in 1961 with a single series of 66 cards, and after that one season it left the sport again.
The design is simple. A box at the top holds the team name and a cartoon logo; below it a white strip gives the name and position; and under that the player appears in a posed black-and-white photograph set onto a solid color. The first 44 cards are portraits like this one. The rest, 45 through 66, are action cards.
Four years without a basketball set, then one season of Fleer, and then none again.
Russell is number 38. It is the card of a man coming off his fifth season, in which the Celtics went 57–22 and won their fourth championship with him, and he was named the league's Most Valuable Player. He averaged 23.9 rebounds a game that year and still trailed Wilt Chamberlain.
The season the card was sold, 1961–62, he did it again: 18.9 points and 23.6 rebounds a game, another Most Valuable Player award, another title.
All 66 cards were printed in equal numbers, so there is no scarce part of the checklist. The difficulty is elsewhere. Most cards in the set turn up off-center, and the centering of a copy decides most of what can be said about it.
