1980-81 O-Pee-Chee Mark Messier #289

the card

notes

The back of this card says Mark Messier shoots right. He was a left-handed shot for twenty-five seasons.

The error was never corrected, which is the useful part. There is no second version to hunt for and no premium attached to finding the wrong one - every copy in existence carries it, and PSA titles the entry that way because the mistake is the card rather than a variant of it.

Messier played 1,756 NHL games, more than anyone except Gordie Howe, and retired second in career points behind Wayne Gretzky. He won five Cups in Edmonton and a sixth in New York in 1994, having guaranteed a win in game six of the conference final and then scored a hat-trick to deliver it. He is the only man to captain two different franchises to a championship.

He has one rookie card and this is it

Topps issued 264 cards for 1980-81. O-Pee-Chee issued 396. Messier is one of the hundred and thirty-two who appear in the Canadian set and not the American one, so there is no Topps equivalent - no cheaper version, no more available version, nothing else to buy.

The 1980-81 O-Pee-Chee set carries five Hall of Fame rookies. Of the five, this is the hardest to find perfect.

What has been graded

PSA has recorded 4,674 base grades and 47 are PSA 10 - a gem rate of 1.01 per cent. That is below the Bourque at 1.25, well below the Gartner at 2.56, the Goulet at 5.94 and the Langway at 8.47.

It is also the second most graded card in the entire set. Only the Gretzky base card at 250 has been submitted more often, and only by two per cent - 4,781 against 4,674. For a rookie to run that close to a Gretzky within his own set is unusual.

Centring is the reason for the low gem rate. O-Pee-Chee's cutting in this period was poor by Topps' standards, and on a card this heavily submitted it shows: 1,107 copies sit at PSA 8 and 908 at PSA 6, with only 355 reaching 9.

Reading the other three graders

Beckett has recorded 1,354 copies, with fourteen at Pristine 10 and sixty-five more at 9.5. SGC has 557 with four tens. CGC has 75 and has never awarded better than an 8.5.

An aggregator adds Beckett's fourteen and sixty-five together, calls the result seventy-nine gems and reports a 5.8 per cent gem rate against PSA's 0.9. That comparison is not sound. A Beckett 9.5 is a 9.5.

Tens against tens the two companies are almost identical here: Beckett 1.03 per cent, PSA 1.01. On this card they agree.

The sales, and the thing they show

Four sales are on record at Heritage and every one is a card at the top of its own scale.

Three are PSA 10s: $3,000 in August 2019, $13,800 in November 2022 and $15,250 in April 2026. Different certificates throughout, so three separate copies, and five times the money across seven years.

The fourth is a Beckett Pristine 10, and it made $18,300 in February 2025 - more than any PSA 10 has.

That is worth sitting with, because it is the opposite of what this site usually finds. On the 1986-87 Fleer Larry Bird, a Beckett 9.5 and a PSA 10 sold as consecutive lots in the same auction for $750 and $8,100.

The difference is what the label actually means. Beckett's 9.5 is a half grade below its ceiling and there are dozens of them. Its Pristine 10 is the ceiling and there are fourteen, against forty-seven PSA 10s. Here the scarcer holder is also the dearer one.

population

PSA

graded elsewhere

recorded 16 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

PSA 9 is the sensible target. There are 355 of them and they sit far below the point where this card gets expensive.

PSA 8, at 1,107 copies, is the largest grade in the population and is a perfectly good-looking card. Most of the set's collectors should be buying there.

PSA 10 is a real market with real depth - 47 copies, three public sales between $3,000 and $15,250 - and it is not where a casual buyer should start.

Look hard at Beckett Pristine 10 before assuming PSA is the top. Fourteen exist against forty-seven PSA 10s, and the one that sold made $18,300 against $15,250 for the most recent PSA 10. Do not confuse it with a BGS 9.5, of which there are sixty-five.

There is no Topps version. Unlike Bourque and Gartner, Messier is absent from the 264-card American set, so the O-Pee-Chee is the only mainstream rookie card of him that exists.

Do not look for a corrected back. The shoots-right error was never fixed and every copy carries it.

Expect rough cutting and check centring first. It is why a card with nearly five thousand graded copies has only forty-seven tens.

what to check before you buy

Check centring on both sides before anything else. It is the single reason this card's gem rate is one per cent.

Look along all four edges for O-Pee-Chee's rough cut. It is original to the printing rather than handling, and graders know that, but it still caps the grade.

Read the back. It says shoots right, and that is correct for this card - he shot left. A copy that says left is not a corrected version, it is not this card.

Confirm the back is bilingual. O-Pee-Chee prints English and French; there is no Topps version of this card to confuse it with, but there are later Messier cards.

If the label says Beckett, read the number and the word together. Pristine 10 is the ceiling and there are fourteen; 9.5 is a half grade lower and there are sixty-five, and they do not price alike.

Verify the certificate before paying four figures.

sources