1980-81 O-Pee-Chee Ray Bourque #140

the card

notes

Ray Bourque played twenty-two seasons and won the Stanley Cup in the last game of the last one.

Boston took him eighth overall in 1979. In his first season he won the Calder as rookie of the year and was named to the First All-Star Team - the first non-goaltender in NHL history to make the first team as a rookie. He would do it twelve more times.

He finished with more goals, more assists and more points than any defenceman who has played the game: 410, 1,169 and 1,579. Five Norris Trophies. Nineteen All-Star games. Twenty-one seasons in Boston without a Cup, a trade to Colorado in March 2000 at his own request, and the Cup lifted on 9 June 2001 in the final game he ever played.

This is card 140, his rookie card, from the 1980-81 O-Pee-Chee set that also carries the rookie cards of Mark Messier, Mike Gartner, Michel Goulet and Rod Langway.

What has been graded

PSA has recorded 3,038 base grades of this card and 38 are PSA 10. The gem rate is 1.25 per cent.

Within its own set that is hard but not the hardest. Messier at 289 gems at 1.01 per cent and the Gretzky base card at 250 does 0.82. Gartner at 195 manages 2.56, Goulet at 67 does 5.94 and Langway at 344 does 8.47.

So of the five Hall of Fame rookies in this set, the Bourque is the second most difficult to find perfect.

The other three companies have seen far fewer. Beckett has recorded 986 copies, SGC 307 and CGC 57.

The Beckett figures need reading carefully

Beckett has nine cards at its Pristine 10 level and fifty-three more at 9.5.

Aggregators normally add those together and call the result sixty-two gems, which would put Beckett's gem rate at 6.3 per cent against PSA's 1.25 and make it look five times more generous. It is not. A Beckett 9.5 is a 9.5.

Comparing tens with tens, Beckett has awarded nine in 986 copies - 0.91 per cent - against PSA's 1.25. On this card Beckett is the stricter of the two at the top, not the looser.

CGC has never awarded this card better than an 8, from fifty-seven copies.

The sales

Four sales are on public record at Heritage.

A PSA 10 made $2,868 in October 2012 and another made $16,470 in April 2026 - different certificates, so two separate copies, and 5.7 times the money across thirteen and a half years.

An SGC 10 made $8,235 in July 2025, about half what the PSA 10 fetched nine months later. An SGC 8.5 made $372 in November 2022.

population

PSA

graded elsewhere

recorded 13 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 8 is where this card is bought. There are 558 of them, it is a good-looking card, and it sits well below the point where prices leave the ground.

PSA 9, at 181 copies, is the sensible stretch. PSA 10 is a different market - 38 exist, and the last one sold for $16,470 in April 2026 against $2,868 for one in 2012.

Consider SGC seriously here. An SGC 10 made $8,235 in July 2025 against $16,470 for the PSA nine months later. SGC has recorded only 307 copies of this card in total, so an SGC 10 is a scarcer object than a PSA 10 and sells for half as much.

Do not read Beckett's gem figure as a 10 count. Nine of its cards are Pristine 10s and fifty-three are 9.5s, and only the nine are tens.

Check the year and the number together. Bourque's rookie is 1980-81 O-Pee-Chee card 140, in the green and yellow Bruins design. He has cards in the O-Pee-Chee sets either side of it.

Check O-Pee-Chee against Topps. Both printed a Bourque rookie that year; Topps printed for the American market in larger numbers, so the O-Pee-Chee is the scarcer and usually dearer card. The O-Pee-Chee backs are in English and French.

Expect rough cutting. O-Pee-Chee's edges in this period would be called damage on an American card and are usually how the Canadian one left the factory.

what to check before you buy

Check centring on both sides. It is the main reason this card grades below expectation.

Look along all four edges for the rough cut O-Pee-Chee was producing in this period. It is original to the printing, not handling, and graders treat it as such - but it still caps the grade.

Check the back is bilingual. O-Pee-Chee cards carry English and French; the Topps version does not.

Read the year on the label, not just the number. O-Pee-Chee carried Bourque in the sets either side of this one.

If the label says Beckett, read the number rather than the word. A BGS 9.5 is a 9.5 and there are fifty-three of them; nine cards carry a Beckett 10.

Verify the certificate before paying four figures.

sources