DimeLabs — Feb. 1991 Air Jordan Flight Club Newsletter Vol. 5

Publications & Printed Items · PSA 7.5 · Newsletter

Air Jordan Flight Club Newsletter
Vol. 5 · February 1991

PSA 7.5 · authenticated original

Estimated value

$1,000

One of one · not for sale

Front · PSA 7.5 · Jordan in Nike windbreaker · February 1991 · Vol. V

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Reverse · Fan poems · Member artwork · Original mailing address

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Item details

GradePSA 7.5

Mailed copyAddress still printed on back

The back coverFan poems · Hand-drawn art

Issue timingFebruary 1991 · Pre-championship

Return addressOne Bowerman Drive · Beaverton OR

CertificationCert #I55559302 · PSA 7.5

Before the internet — this was how you stayed close to Jordan

In February 1991 there was no Twitter, no Instagram, no YouTube, no Jordan Brand website. If you were a dedicated Air Jordan fan who wanted direct communication from Nike about what Jordan was doing and what shoes were coming, you joined the Air Jordan Flight Club. For $15 a year, mailed to Nike's One Bowerman Drive address in Beaverton, Oregon, you were in. Twice a year a newsletter arrived in your mailbox. This is one of those newsletters.

The back cover of this issue is a document of early Jordan fandom that no social media algorithm could replicate. Nike published poems written by 11-year-olds about Michael Jordan — "Fresh Prince of Nike-Air" by Zachary Knipe of Palmyra, Pennsylvania, and "The Man of Talent" by Kyle Kamerman of Bakersfield, California — alongside a hand-drawn illustration by Mike Palmer of Cincinnati, Ohio. Kids writing poems about a basketball player and sending them to a P.O. box in Beaverton. Nike printing them in a newsletter and mailing them back to other kids. That was the Air Jordan Flight Club in 1991.

This newsletter was mailed in February 1991, four months before the Bulls won their first championship. The recipient's address is still on the back. Nike's bulk rate postage is still on the back. Two 11-year-olds' poems about Jordan are still on the back. PSA put it in a slab. Nobody else has submitted one.

— DimeLabs · Air Jordan Flight Club Vol. 5 · PSA Cert #I55559302

The Air Jordan Flight Club no longer exists. Nike has commemorated it with special-edition Air Jordan releases — a "Flight Club" AJ4 and an AJ1 — but the actual membership program ended in the early 1990s. Surviving newsletters, especially subscription copies that were physically mailed and retain their original postage and recipient address, are a genuine piece of Nike and Jordan history. This one has a PSA 7.5 on it. No other subscription copy has ever been submitted.