1985-86 Star

October 20, 2026

76ers page (raw)

Clippers and Celtics page (raw)

Hawks and Nuggets page (raw)

Warriors and Jazz page (raw)

#117 Michael Jordan (BGS 9.5)

#18 Akeem Olajuwon (raw)

#28 Magic Johnson

#166 Patrick Ewing

For sale from this set

1985-86 Star #117 Michael Jordan BGS 9 — #117 Michael Jordan BGS 9
$14,995.00 · Buy now

1985-86 Star #166 Patrick Ewing RC BGS 9.5 — #166 Patrick Ewing RC BGS 9.5
$9,995.00 · Buy now

1985-86 Star #166 Patrick Ewing RC BGS 8.5 — #166 Patrick Ewing RC BGS 8.5
$1,095.00 · Buy now

1985-86 Star #28 Magic Johnson BGS 9 — #28 Magic Johnson BGS 9
$795.00 · Buy now

1985-86 Star Celtics Team Bag Sealed — Celtics Team Bag Sealed
$795.00 · Buy now

1985-86 Star Houston Rockets Team Bag Sealed — Houston Rockets Team Bag Sealed
$495.00 · Buy now

1985-86 Star #28 Magic Johnson EX to EX-MT — #28 Magic Johnson EX to EX-MT
$99.95 · Buy now

1985-86 Star #95 Larry Bird Green Border EX to EX-MT — #95 Larry Bird Green Border EX to EX-MT
$99.95 · Buy now

129 more cards from this set in the shopShow all 137

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#54 Lafayette Lever NM-MT or Better$19.95Buy now
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#102 Scott Wedman NM-MT or Better$19.95Buy now
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#36 Walter Davis NM-MT or Better$19.95Buy now
#35 Alvan Adams NM-MT or Better$19.95Buy now
#34 Larry Nance NM-MT or Better$19.95Buy now
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#109 Mychal Thompson NM-MT or Better$14.95Buy now
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#170 Rory Sparrow NM-MT or Better$14.95Buy now
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#73 Danny Young NM-MT or Better$12.95Buy now
#71 Danny Vranes NM-MT or Better$12.95Buy now
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#43 Scott Hastings NM-MT or Better$12.95Buy now
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#56 Dan Schayes NM-MT or Better$12.95Buy now
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#57 Elston Turner NM-MT or Better$12.95Buy now
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#64 Mike O'Koren NM-MT or Better$12.95Buy now
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#53 Mike Evans NM-MT or Better$9.95Buy now
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#100 Jerry Sichting Green Border EX to EX-MT$6.95Buy now
#97 Dennis Johnson Green Border EX to EX-MT$6.95Buy now

The 1985-86 Star base set was Star's third and last base set: 172 numbers covering 23 teams, sold one team per sealed polybag. The count comes to 180 because the Celtics (#95-102) were printed twice, once with green borders and once with white.

The set at a glance

Cards	180 (172 numbers + 8 second-color Celtics)
Numbering	1-172; #95-102 come in green and white
Teams	23
Errors	2 (#10 Isiah Thomas, #47 Doc Rivers)
Celtics border variations	16
Michael Jordan cards	1
Released	Two series: #1-94, then #95-172
Packaging	One team per sealed bag, 7 to 9 cards
Sets printed (est.)	3,000-5,000 (Basketball Gold)
Type IIs	Second series, #95-172

Team by team

Cards are numbered in team runs. The first series is #1-94 (76ers through Clippers) and the second series is #95-172 (Celtics through Knicks).

Team	Numbers	Cards	Notes
76ers	1-9	9
Pistons	10-17	8
Rockets	18-25	8
Lakers	26-33	8
Suns	34-41	8
Hawks	42-49	8
Nuggets	50-57	8
Nets	58-65	8
Supersonics	66-73	8
Kings	74-80	7
Pacers	81-87	7
Clippers	88-94	7
Celtics	95G-102W	16	8 green, 8 white
Trail Blazers	103-109	7
Bullets	110-116	7
Bulls	117-123	7	#117 Jordan
Bucks	124-130	7
Warriors	131-137	7
Jazz	138-144	7
Spurs	145-151	7
Cavaliers	152-158	7
Mavericks	159-165	7
Knicks	166-172	7	#166 Ewing

The key cards

Michael Jordan: #117 (Bulls) is his second-year Star base card. It came in the seven-card Bulls bag, and Basketball Gold calls it quite easy to grade, with plenty of gem mint copies. It also exists as a Type II.
Patrick Ewing: #166 is his only Star base rookie and the top card of the seven-card Knicks bag. Genuine copies were cut with a wider left border, so a perfectly centered "original" deserves a close look: it may have been trimmed on the left.
Other rookies: #48 Kevin Willis (Hawks) and #107 Jerome Kersey (Trail Blazers); Basketball Gold's card notes also tag #73 Danny Young (SuperSonics) as a true rookie.
Second-year cards: #2 Charles Barkley, #18 Akeem Olajuwon and #144 John Stockton. Third-year cards: #10 Isiah Thomas, #33 James Worthy, #42 Dominique Wilkins and #106 Clyde Drexler.
Veterans: #3 Julius Erving, #26 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, #28 Magic Johnson (pictured with a beard) and #95 Larry Bird.
Green and white borders: the Celtics team set (#95-102) was printed twice, once with green borders and once with white, for 16 Celtics cards. No print-run split is known. Basketball Gold says white is the most collected; starbasketballcards.com says white is slightly harder to find. #99 Robert Parish has no card number on the back in either color.
Errors: #10 Isiah Thomas is missing the Pistons logo at the bottom left of the front. #47 Doc Rivers shows a photo of Ray Williams. #99 Robert Parish and #114 Cliff Robinson have no card number on the back. On most #65 Micheal Ray Richardson cards the position and team line under his name is cut off; some checklists count that as a variation, while Basketball Gold simply notes the line was cut off on most cards, with part of it showing on many.

Type IIs

The second series (#95-172) is where the Type IIs come from, including the #117 Jordan and #166 Ewing, and both Celtics colors. They were printed off-register from Star's original plates on a 100-card sheet that also held the 1986 Michael Jordan set and the four-card 1986 Best of the New.

Basketball Gold describes them as likely scraps or rejects that were taken out of the print shop by its staff (Basketball Gold says two employees; CGC and Steve Taft say one). No original Star dealer ever received them, Robert Levin was not involved, and Basketball Gold calls them counterfeits. They began surfacing in the late 1980s.

Steve Taft stresses that these tells are tendencies, not guarantees:

Back-edge bleed: on cards with colored borders, originals show some of the front border color on one or more back edges, sometimes only under a loupe. Type IIs show none. Watch for bleed added by hand. A bag-pulled #166 Ewing should show blue on the back top and right edges.
Finish and backs: Type IIs tend to be glossier, while originals have a dull, matte finish. Type II backs tend to have brighter ink.
White frame: on Type II #117 and #166 the white frame around the photo spills all the way around and looks choppy. On an original #117 the spill is on the left only.
Frame lines: on the Trail Blazers the frame line is red on originals and orange under magnification on Type IIs.
White-border Celtics: the hardest to check, because there is no colored border to bleed. Go by gloss and back brightness.
Bags and slabs: Type IIs were never sold in Star's team bags, so a genuine sealed bag rules them out, but they do turn up on top of resealed bags. PSA slabbed some Type IIs as genuine in the early 1990s before it stopped grading Star, and some of those slabs still come up for sale.

See Type IIs for more on telling them from originals.

How the set was made

Star, Robert Levin's small Pennsylvania company, was the NBA's only licensed card maker from 1983 to 1986. With 172 numbers, this is the smallest of its three base sets (1983-84 had 275, 1984-85 had 288). It came out in two series, #1-94 first and then #95-172. Star had no factory of its own; the cards came from two print shops on the Cherry Hill, NJ / Pennsylvania border.

There were no wax packs. Each team came in its own small sealed bag, with 7 to 9 cards, sold to hobby dealers through Star's master distributors. Steve Taft recalls that dealers had to order five of each team to get dealer pricing, and Basketball Gold says dealers received one bag of the 1986 Best of the New for every five complete 1985-86 sets they bought. Basketball Gold estimates 3,000 to 5,000 sets were made (starbasketballcards.com says 2,000 to 5,000). Leftover inventory was sold at Levin's 1990 auction.

What collectors should know

Condition: Basketball Gold says the set is plagued with surface issues, including parts of letters missing in names, teams and positions, and the card stock is thinner than in Star's other base sets. The Rockets are known for surface problems, with white marks on many #18 Olajuwons. The Lakers logo picks up bleed from another card's back, and #26 Kareem has white specks on the black background. The Bucks are almost impossible to find well centered, the first Knicks cards (#166 Ewing, #167 Cartwright, #168 Cummings) are tough to center, while the later ones are easier, and #95 Bird and #102 Wedman are tough to find centered. On the other side, the Kings, Clippers and Trail Blazers usually grade well, and the Bulls and Bullets are clean.
Not fading: the pinkish color on the Hawks is how the cards were printed. The white lettering on #172 Walker is also normal, even though the rest of the Knicks use orange.
Sealed bags: a complete 172-card set is 23 sealed team bags (24 if you want both Celtics colors). An original sealed bag proves the cards are original, not that they are mint. Resealed bags exist, and a bag with a Type II on top is one of them. GAI bag grades rate the plastic and seals, not the cards. Basketball Gold notes Ewing is the top card of the Knicks bag, Bird of the Celtics bags, and Jazz bags can have Dantley or Stockton on top.
Grading: BGS has graded Star since December 2008. PSA returned to Star in 2022 and added most of the other 1983-86 sets in March 2023, but PSA currently does not grade the 1985-86 base set (or Best of the New, Best of the Best, the 1986 Jordan set or the Magic Johnson set). CGC began grading 1980s Star in May 2025; we have not confirmed whether it takes #95-172. Older SCD and GAI slabs also turn up. See Grading Companies.
Shop at Home: in 1997 Levin had new, backdated Star cards printed and sold them on the Shop at Home TV channel. They are fantasy designs, not reprints, and no Shop at Home version of the 1985-86 base cards is known. That is a separate problem from Type IIs, which Levin had nothing to do with.