1981-82 O-Pee-Chee Jari Kurri #107

the card

notes

Jari Kurri scored 601 goals and 1,398 points, and for most of them he was playing beside Wayne Gretzky.

Edmonton took him 69th overall in 1980, in the fourth round, out of Jokerit in Helsinki. Nobody drafts a Hall of Famer at 69 on purpose. He won five Stanley Cups with the Oilers, scored 71 goals in 1984-85, and in 2001 became the first Finn elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame.

This is his rookie card, card 107 of the 1981-82 O-Pee-Chee set - the same set that carries the rookie cards of Paul Coffey, Glenn Anderson, Denis Savard, Dino Ciccarelli, Larry Murphy and Peter Stastny. Seven Hall of Fame rookies in one 396-card issue.

Three of those seven were Oilers. Kurri at 107, Anderson at 108, Coffey at 111 - four cards apart, all three about to win five Cups together.

What PSA has recorded

PSA has graded 1,385 copies and 32 are PSA 10, a gem rate of 2.31 per cent.

The population sits where this set's populations usually sit. PSA 8 holds 352 copies and PSA 7 holds 325, with 156 at 9 and 32 at 10. O-Pee-Chee's cutting in this period is the reason; the stock and the printing were fine.

Against the rest of the set that is close to the middle. The Gretzky at 106, directly before it, gems at 0.89 per cent - two and a half times harder, from the card immediately alongside on the same sheet.

Beckett reports 13.6 per cent, and has awarded five tens

Beckett has recorded 317 copies of this card. Five are Pristine 10 and thirty-eight more are 9.5.

Added together those give 43 gems and a rate of 13.6 per cent against PSA's 2.31, which reads as Beckett being six times more generous. Tens against tens it is the other way: Beckett 1.58 per cent, PSA 2.31.

This site has now put that comparison on four cards and it has come out differently each time. On the 1986-87 Fleer Ewing Beckett has awarded one ten in 2,193 copies against PSA's 162 in 9,921. On the Chris Mullin, one in 1,107. On the Gretzky Super Action, Beckett is fractionally looser than PSA. Here it is moderately stricter.

There is no ratio to apply. The headline gem rate is wrong on every card because it adds two grades together, but how wrong, and in which direction, has to be read card by card.

SGC has 129 copies and has never awarded this card a ten. CGC has 39 and has not either. So all 37 tens recorded anywhere sit with PSA and Beckett.

Twenty-one years of sales

Six sales are on record and the earliest is from June 2005, which makes it the oldest result anywhere on this site by more than a decade.

A PSA 9 made $96 at Heritage in 2005. Another made $270 in April 2023 - 2.8 times the money across eighteen years, which is a far flatter line than most cards here.

The PSA 10 has moved faster and more recently. One made $930 in December 2019, one made $2,040 at Heritage in September 2023, and one made $1,770 at Goldin that December. The September figure is the highest recorded for this card.

A PSA 8 made $104 at Goldin in February 2024, which is the whole argument for buying the middle of this ladder.

population

PSA

graded elsewhere

recorded 26 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 the card to buy. There are 352 of them, one sold for $104 in February 2024, and it is a perfectly good-looking rookie card of a Hall of Famer.

PSA 9, at 156 copies, has sold at $96 and $270 eighteen years apart. It is the sensible stretch and it has not run away.

PSA 10 is a different market. Thirty-two exist and three have sold publicly between $930 and $2,040.

Do not read Beckett's 13.6 per cent gem rate as a count of tens. It is five Pristine 10s and thirty-eight cards at 9.5 added together. Five Beckett tens exist against thirty-two PSA 10s.

Neither SGC nor CGC has awarded this card a ten, from 168 copies between them. If you are buying at the top, PSA and Beckett are the only two ceilings that exist.

If you want the Oilers rookie class rather than this one card, Glenn Anderson sits at 108 and Paul Coffey at 111, both in the same set and both cheaper than the Gretzky beside them.

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 card left the factory.

what to check before you buy

Check centring on both sides, and look along all four edges for O-Pee-Chee's rough cut. It is original to the printing rather than handling, but it still caps the grade.

Confirm the back is bilingual. O-Pee-Chee prints English and French.

Check the card number. Topps ran a regional East and West split for 1981-82 covering cards 67 to 132, so a Topps card in this range exists in two versions. O-Pee-Chee ran one 396-card set and Kurri is 107 in it.

Read the label for a qualifier before you read the grade.

If the label says Beckett, read the number rather than the word gem. Pristine 10 and 9.5 are different cards at different prices, and published gem rates add them together.

sources