The front of Tim Duncan's 1997-98 Topps Finest Gold card showcases him as part of the “Arrival” subset, a nod to the first overall pick's rookie status at the time.
There's a lot going on with this Embossed Die-Cut Refractor. Numbered /74, it's one of the Hall of Famer's best and rarest cards from his freshman season with the Spurs.
In 1997-98, Topps maintained the theming of Finest for a second straight year. The company broke the two-series set into three tiers—Bronze (common), Silver (uncommon), and Gold (rare)—and also categorized cards into various subsets that ran throughout the checklist. However, a partial parallel that featured an embossed version of the cards was new to the product. Only players featured on the 66 Silver and 40 Gold cards from the set received the embossment, and the hardest-to-find cards in the product were the Embossed Refractors. Each Gold Embossed Refractor features die-cutting and the hyper-plaid Refractor pattern.
Collectors found a Gold Embossed Refractor once every 1,152 packs (meaning it took an average of 46,080 packs to find a specific player such as Duncan).
This is one of just three copies to land a Gem Mint 10 grade from PSA.
The certification number on this card has been checked against the third-party grader's online database and is active as of 05/04/2026.
