I've been wanting a relic card and a certified autograph card from Manute Bol for a while, but the ones from Panini Flawless that were on the market generally fall well outside my price range. Bol died in 2010 of complications from a disease he likely contracted while performing humanitarian work in his native Sudan. I tend to gravitate toward players who stand out somehow from the crowd, and Bol matches that profile by tying with Gheorghe Muresan as the tallest players to play in the NBA. I also enjoy collecting cards of two of the shortest players to play in the NBA, Muggsy Bogues and Spud Webb.
I've pursued a number of his relic cards that have popped up over the last few months, but recently I found this one with a Buy It Now price of under $5. There is another version of this card that is serially-numbered and goes for quite a bit more, but I figured this one would be good enough to get me started. I would really like to get an autographed card to go with it. Bol has a few cards out there, but they don't seem to pop up all that often.
I found this photo of my two favorite players while looking up information for this post. It doesn't have much to do with the Bol card aside from featuring Gheorghe Muresan, who is regarded as being slightly taller than Bol. To put this in perspective, Olajuwon, who looks to be getting his shop blocked by Muresan in this photo, is 7 feet tall. Muresan is a big dude.
07 JAN 2014 Update: I did actually get a Gheorghe Muresan card in the mail the other day. As the co-tallest NBA player ever, he fits perfectly here in this post. It is not a relic card, but it is relatively low-numbered, at # 096 / 100. I don't really know anything about basketball sets past 1998 or so, so I have no clue really how 2009-2010 Playoff Contenders fits into the grand scheme of basketball cards, but this Legendary Contenders insert card is a part of it. Can't say a whole lot for the design, but it is one more notch in the player collection. It might be my first serially-numbered Muresan card, although I do have a couple of autographs which I would categorize as a higher tier of card than something merely numbered, at least until you get way down to the # / 5 and 1 / 1 cards, again depending on the player involved. Any 'legend' in a respective sport should always have an autograph trump a serially-numbered or shiny card.
I'm not necessarily sure that the Bullets made the playoffs while Muresan played for them. If they did it wasn't a very memorable run. It makes him an odd choice for inclusion in a Legendary Contenders set within a product called Playoff Contenders.
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