1948-49 Leaf Joe DiMaggio #1

the card

notes

Leaf gave card number 1 to Joe DiMaggio, which was the obvious decision in 1948. He was 33, coming off a season in which he hit .320 and led the American League in home runs with 39 and runs batted in with 155, playing on heels that were about to need surgery. It was the last season in which he was unambiguously the best player in the game.

The card front reads JOE DI MAGGIO, in three words, which is how the set spells it and how PSA lists it. His name on the field was DiMaggio.

What the population report says about this card is unusual enough to be the main fact about it. Of 1,276 copies PSA has graded, none is a PSA 10. One is a PSA 9. Thirteen are PSA 8. Nor is PSA alone in that. Beckett has graded 131 copies of this card, SGC 690 and CGC 12, and none of the three has ever awarded it a 10 either. Everything else - more than 98 per cent of the graded population - is PSA 7 or below, and the single largest grade is PSA 2 with 289 copies.

That is not because children were careless with it. It is because of how the set was made. Leaf applied colour to black and white photographs on presses that could not hold registration, so the images wander, the colours misalign and the centring drifts. A card can be untouched since 1949 and still not grade above a 5, because what is wrong with it was wrong when it left the factory.

There is no short-print story here to add to that. Short prints in this set sit between roughly 85 and 135 graded copies; DiMaggio sits at 1,276. He is one of the most graded cards in the set precisely because he is one of the few worth paying to grade.

The set also holds Babe Ruth at 3, Ted Williams at 76 and Honus Wagner at 70. Being card 1 in that company, in the first colour set after the war, is the whole appeal.

population

PSA

graded elsewhere

recorded 29 aug 2026. figures are a snapshot on that date, not a live count.

recorded sales

dated past results, not an estimate of what a copy is worth today. figures published by an auction house normally include the buyer's premium, so they are more than the seller received.

where to buy one

Set your grade expectations to the set, not to the player.

There is no PSA 10 and there is one PSA 9, so the top of this market is PSA 8 and the half grade above it. Below that, a PSA 5 or 6 on this card is a strong example rather than a compromise, and PSA 3 and 4 together account for 440 copies - it is genuinely obtainable at that level.

The recorded sales show how thin the top is. A PSA 8 fetched $14,400 in November 2018 and $39,600 in January 2022. The 8.5 sold for $43,200 back in 2017. Three sales across five years, moving by a factor of nearly three. Any one of those numbers quoted alone tells you very little.

Buy graded. This is a seventy-seven year old card with real value, from a set where trimming and recolouring are worth someone's time, and 84 copies already carry a qualifier.

And check the card size before you buy pages for it. These are 2 and 3/8 by 2 and 7/8 inches and will not sit properly in standard modern sleeves.

what to check before you buy

Read the label for a qualifier first. 84 of the 1,276 graded copies carry one, and on a card where most of the population sits at 2 and 3, a qualifier at 5 or 6 changes what you are buying considerably.

Do not read poor registration as damage or as a fake. Misaligned colour, a halo around the figure and a slightly doubled image are original to the printing on this set. They will cap the grade, and they are not evidence that something happened to the card.

Check centring on both sides. It is the most common reason this card grades where it does.

Check the back. Wrong backs, blank backs and overprinted backs are documented across this set, and PSA tracks wrong backs as separate entries. DiMaggio is not among the numbers where PSA lists one, so a wrong back on card 1 is something to ask about rather than assume.

At PSA 8 and above, verify the certificate number with PSA directly before paying.

sources