It was the summer of 1998. The song I will always remember from that time was Closing Time, by Semi-Sonic.
As we were winding things down at Pinnacle, and each and every day there seemed to be fewer and fewer people there, that song became an anthem. There was a lyric, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”
You can apply that to just about anything that is going through a change.
Pinnacle’s spectacular implosion was not the only thing in the hobby going through a massive change at that time. The basketball card market, particularly the NBA market, was a disaster. Michael Jordan was about to retire, again, and the NBA was going through a lockout.
But then, by the time March rolled around – 25 years ago to be exact – the hobby was rebounding and Vinsanity was beginning to emerge.
When I left Pinnacle, there were seven people left out of what had been a staff of about 250 at the beginning of the year. I had an entire floor of a high-end downtown Dallas office building to myself. Eventually, I moved on and accepted a great opportunity at Collector’s Edge and their parent company, Shop at Home. The product that was just hitting the market when I got to Denver was Impulse Basketball, a draft pick basketball set. The two players that were driving the hype in the draft pick card market, which was particularly strong that year because of the lockout, were Vince Carter and his North Carolina teammate, Antawn Jamison.
When the lockout finally ended and life without Michael Jordan began with the return to play in January 1998 – every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end – the NBA was looking for a new star. Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant were both emerging as superstars. But Vince Carter was the player that fans were going crazy over.
Vinsanity.
The Toronto Raptors were a young team at this point. They drafted Jamison fourth and the Golden State Warriors picked Carter fifth, and then the two teams immediately traded their two picks for each other. Golden State wanted Jamison badly, and made a deal with the Raptors that if they selected Jamison, then Golden State would pick Carter and then they would make a trade. Toronto also got a few hundred thousand dollars in the deal.
Air Canada
On Feb. 21, 1999, the Raptors moved into the new Air Canada Centre, which is now known as Scotiabank Arena. The Raptors played their first few seasons in the awkward-for-basketball SkyDome, now the Rogers Centre. It was and still is a baseball stadium. If there isn’t a bad seat in the house at Scotiabank Arena, there wasn’t a good seat in the house at the dome.
But that night, Carter christened the new arena. He scored 27 points against the Vancouver Grizzlies and delivered a couple of jaw-dropping dunks.
This new arena was his house. That night, he was first called Air Canada.
The basketball card market, however, was still in recovery mode. Yes, it was rebounding. Carter was slowly emerging as must-watch-TV because of his high-flying aerials and creative dunks. Bryant, in his third season by this point, had just become a Lakers’ starter and wasn’t a driving force in the hobby yet. The sting of Jordan’s retirement was still affecting basketball card sales. Once Carter’s rookie cards hit the market, there was immediate interest, even though some considered him playing “in obscurity” in Toronto for a non-playoff team.
Carter was an almost unanimous selection as NBA Rookie of the Year. Karl Malone of the Utah Jazz was the first MVP of the post-Jordan era. After the season, basketball boxes were starting to sell. At Shop at Home, Vince Carter was becoming a driver for basketball card sales. The hobby was starting to ignite at levels not seen since before the 1994 Baseball strike, as Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa chased Roger Maris’ all-time record of 61 home runs in a season.
Another driving force gathering attention and momentum and keeping many card shops busy with customer and traffic flow was the craze for Pokemon. I still cringe when I think of Don West pitching PSA-10 Charizard cards, calling Charizard “the Mark McGwire of Japanese animation” in a way that only Don West could.
Vinsanity Arrives
Meanwhile at Collector’s Edge and Shop At Home, we cranked up our efforts to take advantage of the surging hobby interest in basketball’s young stars. The 1999 Collector’s Edge was a perfect fit for Shop at Home, as it featured 20 of the top rookies from the 1998-99 season.
Carter was the driver of sales for that set. I had never been a fan of photoshopped uniforms with the logos erased, but without league licensing, those were the parameters within which we were playing.
Carter, at this time, may have been the reigning rookie of the year, but Bryant was beginning to emerge as a superstar. One of the products we created at Shop at Home was KB8, which was a set devoted to Bryant with Bryant autographs. We also had Bryant sign a number of NBA basketballs that were sold as part of the program. I can’t remember if we charged $199 or $299 for them. I think it was $299. Today, for anyone who was either smart enough to buy one or hypnotized by Don West and Jedi mind-tricked into reaching for your credit card and calling Shop at Home at 3 a.m., that purchase was a very good one. Those balls now sell in the $3,000 range.
There was never a discussion but I do remember making a random comment to Collector’s Edge President Alan Lewis one day that it was too bad we couldn’t do a Vince Carter set and program. But that was it. It was a comment, kind of in a thinking out loud way, and it was never thought of again. At least for a while.
Carter continued to ball out during his second year in the NBA. Suddenly, he made the Toronto Raptors good.
Then, at the NBA All-Star Game’s Slam Dunk Contest, Vinsanity was born. Carter won the NBA Slam Dunk Contest. Carter defied gravity and did things Dr. J, David Thompson and Michael Jordan could never have thought of.
Suddenly, Vince Carter was a very big deal. His cards immediately took off. At Shop at Home, suddenly there was huge interest in once unwanted-by-collectors 1998-99 NBA basketball card boxes that were selling as close outs.
Bad Taste in My Mouth
I will never forget this as long as I live.
Less than two weeks after Vinsanity was born, we were at the Kit Young Hawaii Industry Conference in Honolulu.
The host hotel was the Ilikai. On one of the mornings, the breakfast was sponsored by the NBA. As I stood in line at the buffet, waiting to scoop some scrambled eggs and sausage onto my plate, I was listening to a woman who worked for the NBA talking to the person beside her. She was an executive, obviously more important than I was as I did everything I could not to spill anything on my white Collector’s Edge golf shirt and my Jake-from-State-Farm khakis.
They were talking about Vince Carter and the slam dunk contest. Being Canadian and being a Raptors fan – I had grown up a Cleveland Cavaliers fan in the Bingo Smith, Foots Walker, Austin Carr era but I converted once Toronto got a team – my ears perked up when Carter was being talked about.
“The thing we have to do now is figure out how to get him out of Toronto and get him in a real basketball market,” the woman said. “He’s being wasted up there. We need him playing in a big American market.”
I bit my tongue. Hard. Like, it bled. Who did this woman think she was? Had she ever bought a pack of cards in her life? But I had to remember the pecking order. I was a hobby drone. She was a queen bee.
My intensity as a Raptors fan grew a zillion-fold at that moment. I wanted Carter to become the Oscar Robertson of Canada.
As I got back to the table and joined Alan and Ted Kreder and a few other hobby veterans for breakfast, my mind went back to Bryant and KB8. What would it take for Collector’s Edge to produce a Vinsanity basketball card product with autograph basketballs?
That question was never answered.
Carter Moves On
Shortly after the All-Star Game, the Raptors got to play in a game nationally televised on NBC. The team was five years old, but this was their first time in US prime time. Carter responded by pouring in 51 points.
His popularity on both sides of the border took off from there. In the 2000 Olympics, Carter led the US Dream Team to gold and had one of the most memorable dunks in basketball history when he posterized France’s Frederic Weis.
In the time Vince Carter was in Toronto, he had a massive impact on the growth and popularity of the NBA in Canada.
Toronto became one of the top high school basketball cities in North America. Kids grew up wanting to be Vince Carter.
In an interview after Carter’s retirement, Raptors superfan Drake commented that before Carter arrived, there was no mainstream basketball culture in Toronto. In fact, in the Raptors’ first year, fans used clappers and thundersticks when their own team was shooting free throws.
Vince Carter changed that. He made the city and the country fall in love with the game. Hockey was still king, but every kid wanted to play basketball. Suddenly every street had houses with basketball nets in the driveway.
There were always three or four Canadians in the NBA, but now there are now 27. That is the direct influence of Vince Carter, the man these players grew up idolizing. Anthony Bennett and Alan Wiggins ended up being first overall draft picks. Tristan Thompson once told Carter that he was the Michael Jordan for him and others who grew up in Canada watching him.
Basketball card packs and boxes started to move at hobby shops, not just in Toronto but throughout the country. Everyone wanted Vince Carter cards.
Carter was traded Dec. 17, 2004. It remains one of the darkest days in Canadian basketball history, trailing only the day the Vancouver Grizzles moved to Memphis. There were reports that Carter wanted out, and that he was disgruntled. At least, that’s what the Raptors said. As a result, Carter was turned to a villain, serenaded by passionate boos every time he returned.
Years later, Carter cleared the air on an interview with Canadian sport network SportsNet. Carter said he wanted to stay in Toronto, but that the Raptors had made the deal. He said he loved Toronto, will always love Toronto, and loves the fans. In 2014, a video tribute was given to Carter when he was a visiting player with the Memphis Grizzlies. While there were some boos at the beginning, everyone in building was cheering by the end of the montage. When Carter was shown on camera with tears trickling down his face, Toronto was officially back in love with Vince Carter.
Hall of Fame
Vince Carter retired in 2020. In his last game, playing for Atlanta against the New York Knicks, he hit a three-pointer on his last shot. That was March 11, 2020, the same day that the remainder of the season was cancelled due to COVID-19.
Carter is the only player in NBA history to play in four different decades. He is third in NBA history in games played. He was an eight-time all-star. He played for 22 seasons.
Carter will be one of the players inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame this year. Over the weekend, he gave an interview to SportsNet that was televises nationally in Canada.
“Thank you for sticking with it, thank you for understanding, thank you for listening,” Carter said about his time in Toronto. “It’s been an up-and-down ride and journey and we had to feed out the BS. It was an honor and pleasure to go through it, it helped me grow up even faster, mold me, taught me life lessons, what life is about.
“There’s no greater honor than to go into the Basketball Hall of Fame as a Raptor.”
All is well between Carter and the city who loved him, loathed him, and loved him again.
And as far as the hobby is concerned, I wonder if it’s not too late to put together that Vinsanity card set and memorabilia line.
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