1970 Topps Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) #75 PSA Gem Mint 10....

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1970 Topps Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) #75 PSA Gem Mint 10. It was one of the most consequential coin flips in the history of American sports. After turning down a million-dollar offer to sign as the star attraction of the Harlem Globetrotters, the three-time NCAA National Player of the Year from UCLA opted for fate instead, allowing a fifty-cent piece to determine his new home. Phoenix Suns executive Jerry Colangelo was tasked with making the call in the NBA offices for the privilege of the first pick in the 1969 draft, confident as he watched the tumbling Kennedy half dollar fall toward Commissioner J. Walter Kennedy's outstretched palm.

The Arizona Republic newspaper had run a poll of its readers the previous week to vote heads or tails, and the residents of Phoenix had elected the former. How could they be wrong? "I just felt like we were going to win the flip," Colangelo later lamented. "We had taken a group of young guys in the expansion draft who would have fit perfectly with him (Alcindor). We would have been in prime position to have a good long run.''

But rather than the profile of the fallen President, a stern bald eagle stared up at him, delivering the first draft pick, and thus the man who would become the most prolific scorer in the history of professional basketball, to the fledgling Milwaukee Bucks franchise. The next season, with the help of fellow future Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson, Alcindor would deliver the basketball fans of Wisconsin their first, and still only, NBA Championship.

The presented "tall boy" trading card dates to that most glorious vintage on the Dairy State hardcourt, echoing its subject's status as the all-time leader, the sole Gem Mint 10 specimen in the PSA population. That designation leaves little cause for a condition report, as every last molecule of the relic is pure perfection as it celebrates its Golden Anniversary during the 2020-21 NBA season.