1984-85 Star Arena

October 20, 2026

#A1 Larry Bird

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The 1984-85 Star Arena set is really five small team sets, Celtics, Mavericks, Bucks, Lakers and 76ers, 49 cards in all, made in limited runs of about 3,000 for distribution at the teams' arenas. The Bucks set holds what Basketball Gold calls "likely the rarest Star Co. card": #C6 Bob Lanier, pulled from the set when he retired.

The set at a glance

Cards	49 (five team sets)
Numbering	Each team numbered from 1; listed here with A-E team prefixes, as Basketball Gold does
Teams	Celtics, Mavericks, Bucks, Lakers, 76ers
Sets printed (est.)	3,000 of each team (Basketball Gold and starbasketballcards.com); fewer Laniers
Packaging	One sealed bag per team, no checklist card
Short prints (SP)	1 (Bucks #6 Bob Lanier)
Errors	2 (Mavericks #1 Aguirre and #6 Harper)

Team by team

Team	Numbers	Cards	Notes
Celtics	A1-A9	9	#A9 Parish, Bird and McHale with the coaches
Mavericks	B1-B11	11	#B1 Aguirre misspelled "Aguire"; #B6 Derek Harper misnamed "Mike Harper"
Bucks	C1-C9	9	#C6 Bob Lanier SP
Lakers	D1-D10	10	#D9 Magic and Kareem, All-Stars; #D10 Kareem, League Leaders
76ers	E1-E10	10

How the set was made

Star, Robert Levin's small Pennsylvania company, held the NBA license from 1983 to 1986 and sold most of its cards in sealed polybags, one team or subset per bag. Basketball Gold says the Arena sets were made "for distribution at games," in runs of about 3,000 of each card, and notes they cover the same five teams that had short-printed team sets in the 1983-84 base set. The sources differ on how fans got them: starbasketballcards.com says they were sold at the arenas (the Forum in Los Angeles, Reunion Arena in Dallas), while Sports Collectors Daily describes trading card nights. No source gives a price.

Each team came in its own sealed bag with no checklist card; the backs of the Lakers and Celtics bags show the #10 Kareem and #9 Celtics cards. starbasketballcards.com describes the card backs as plainer than usual for Star, with no stat line and a short biography, and the Bucks cards as lime green with red text and a "Star '84" logo.

The rosters look a season old. Nate Archibald, Bob Lanier, Junior Bridgeman and Marques Johnson were all 1983-84 Bucks who were gone by the 1984-85 season, and four of the Mavericks (Bill Garnett, Jim Spanarkel, Elston Turner and Mark West) were not on Dallas' 1984-85 roster either. Lanier retired on September 24, 1984, and Basketball Gold and TCDB both say his card was pulled from the set when he did.

What collectors should know

The Lanier bag: most Bucks Arena bags do not include Lanier. Basketball Gold: "If your sealed bag has 9 cards, it is likely a rare bag with Lanier."
Numbering mix-ups: the cards are numbered from 1 within each team, so they can collide with other sets. Basketball Gold notes 76ers Arena cards entered in the BGS population report as 1983-84 short-print 76ers, and #A1 Bird entered as 1984-85 Star #1 Bird. Check the slab label against the card.
Grading: PSA's eligible-set list reads "1984 Star Arena Sets (Label all 1984 sans Celtics, which is 1984-85)," so PSA labels the Bucks, Lakers, 76ers and Mavericks Arena cards 1984 and the Celtics 1984-85. BGS has graded Star since December 2008. CGC began grading 1980s Star in May 2025; its announcement publishes no set list.
Fakes: none of the five Arena sets is a Type II set (those are limited to 1985-86 #95-172, the 1986 Jordan set and 1986 Best of the New), and none was remade for Shop at Home in 1997. Watch for the "Bulls Arena" sets, though: those are 1997 Shop at Home fantasy issues, not Star originals.

The key cards

#C6 Bob Lanier SP: the set's rarity. starbasketballcards.com puts its run "well short of" 3,000.
Larry Bird, #A1 and #A9: Bird posting up against Michael Cooper on #A1, and Bird with Parish and McHale on #A9.
Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: #D1 Kareem, #D3 Magic, #D9 the two of them, and #D10 Kareem, League Leaders. starbasketballcards.com names #1, #3 and #9 the Lakers' most valuable cards.
#E1 Julius Erving and #D8 James Worthy: both appear in Basketball Gold's card lists for those players.