1977 Star Wars Argentina Luke Skywalker #1

the card

notes

Forty copies of this card have been graded and none has come back better than a PSA 6.

That is the whole set in one card. The Argentine issue used the same photographs as the American Topps series, and the cards came with an album to paste them into. A card glued into an album and later lifted out is not a card that grades well, and a great many went in.

Card 1 is Luke Skywalker here as it is in America, one of 45 cards out of 68 that share both a title and a number with the US set. Twenty-one others carry the same image at a different number and two have no US equivalent at all.

The population is tiny in a way that needs stating carefully, because a small number here does not mean what a small number usually means.

PSA has recorded forty base grades of this card, plus four half grades and two qualified copies - forty-six entries in total. The American Luke Skywalker at card 1 of the Topps set has 5,252. This card has not been graded 130 times fewer because 130 times fewer exist. It has been graded that much less because almost nobody is trying.

Beckett, SGC and CGC record nothing at all. Not zero after checking - no entry for the card in any of them.

The grades run from a single PSA 6 pair at the top down through fifteen at PSA 4, which is the most common result, to ten at PSA 1. Nothing has reached 7, let alone higher. Across the whole 68-card set the best anything has managed is a PSA 9, of which there are three, and no card has ever graded 10.

One recorded sale exists. In December 2025 a PSA 1.5 - one of the four half grades - sold at Heritage for $968.75.

A card in Fair condition making nearly a thousand dollars tells you the scarcity is real even if the population figure understates it. It also means there is no useful market reading above that grade, because nothing above it has sold in public.

The auction description said only seventeen had been graded. Our reading of PSA's report says forty base grades and forty-six entries. The sale was in December 2025 and the report is more recent, so the figure has moved, or the description was counting something narrower. We have not been able to reconcile it and would not repeat the seventeen.

The American set that supplied the image is at 1977 Topps Star Wars Series 1, where the same photograph is card 1 as well.

population

recorded 04 sep 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

This is a card you buy when you find one, not a card you shop for.

Forty base grades exist in PSA's records and one sale is on public record - a PSA 1.5 at $968.75 in December 2025. There is no established price at any other grade because nothing else has sold in public.

The top of the market is a PSA 6 and there are two. If you want a high-grade example you are waiting for one of those two to move, and nobody has recorded it happening.

Low grade is not a compromise on this card, it is the market. Fifteen copies are PSA 4, the most common result, and thirty-five per cent of the whole set grades 3 or lower. That is what an album does.

Buy raw with the album in mind and check the back before anything else. Paper loss, glue residue, thinning and skinning all follow from a card being pasted down and lifted out, and none of it shows from the front.

Be careful which Argentine issue you are being offered. Several Latin American Star Wars sets circulate from 1977 and 1978 using the same photographs, and sellers are frequently vague. The PSA label reads 1977 Star Wars Argentina; anything else is a different card.

And note that card numbers do not map across. This is card 1 in both countries, but twenty-one of the sixty-eight sit at a different number from the American card carrying the same image.

what to check before you buy

Check the back first. These were made to be pasted into an album, so glue residue, paper loss, thinning and skinning are the characteristic damage and none of it is visible from the front.

Expect the card to grade low. Nothing in this set has graded above a 9 and this card has never exceeded a 6. A copy that looks better than that is worth a second look rather than immediate excitement.

Confirm the label says Argentina. Several Latin American issues from 1977 and 1978 use the same photographs and PSA catalogues them separately.

Check the card number against the image. Twenty-one of the sixty-eight cards in this set sit at a different number from the American card carrying the same photograph, so a number alone does not identify the image.

Collectors report that the Argentine cards carry no printed caption on the front, unlike the American issue. If a card described as Argentine has an English caption printed on it, that is worth asking about.

sources