Panini, the Italian company from Modena that defined the sticker-album hobby, brought NBA basketball to European collectors at the end of the 1980s. This is sticker #261 from the 1988–89 Panini Basket NBA 89 set — the Spanish-market edition, distributed by Panini España and manufactured in Italy by Edizioni Panini of Modena, dated © 1989. These were peel-and-stick ‘cromos’ sold loose from Spanish kioscos and bookshops and meant to be mounted into the NBA 89 album; the back even instructs collectors to buy the album and request missing stickers from Panini España in Torroella de Montgrí (Gerona).

The set ran #1–292 in a single series and contained three Jordan stickers — #76, #261 and #285 — with #261 and #285 the action-photo issues. This one shows a terrific full-bleed shot of Jordan driving the ball upcourt in the red Bulls road uniform, flanked by two yellow stars, with ‘261 – Michael Jordan’ printed beneath. Here is what makes it so hard in gem: these were stickers built to be peeled and stuck down, so the overwhelming majority were destroyed in the act of collecting them — pasted into albums, handled by kids, never meant to be preserved. The European-only distribution kept them well outside the American market and the hobby’s radar for decades, so relatively few were ever submitted at all. PSA has graded just 102 across all grades, with only 13 reaching PSA 10 — a genuinely thin gem population for a card most collectors have never heard of.