1981-82 O-Pee-Chee Paul Coffey #111

the card

notes

Paul Coffey scored 48 goals in 1985-86. No defenceman has ever scored more in a season, and it has stood for forty years.

Edmonton took him sixth overall in 1980. He won four Cups with the Oilers and a fifth with Pittsburgh in 1991, took three Norris Trophies, and finished with 1,531 points - second among defencemen only to Ray Bourque, whose rookie card sits in the set before this one.

This is his rookie card, and it is the most graded card in the whole 1981-82 O-Pee-Chee set. PSA has seen 2,709 copies of it against 2,485 of the Gretzky at 106 - a rookie outranking a Gretzky inside his own set, which is unusual enough to be worth saying twice.

The two gem at almost the same rate, too: Coffey 0.92 per cent, Gretzky 0.89. Of the seven Hall of Fame rookies in this set, Coffey is the hardest to find perfect.

Four graders, four different answers

This is the first card on this site where SGC is the most generous of the four.

PSA has awarded 25 tens in 2,709 copies, a rate of 0.92 per cent. SGC has awarded four in 276 - 1.45 per cent, which is half as likely again. Beckett has awarded one in 714, at 0.14. CGC has 81 copies and none.

Beckett's published figure says 6.0 per cent, because it adds its single Pristine 10 to forty-two cards at 9.5 and calls the total gems. Tens against tens it is the strictest of the four here by a wide margin.

This site has now run that comparison on six cards and got six different orderings. There is no rule to apply - only the split, card by card.

The sales are thin, and two of them need explaining

Five sales are on record, and four of the five are at Goldin. Heritage has sold only one single copy of this card and it was signed, so it does not belong on this page.

A PSA 10 made $5,033 at Goldin in March 2024, which is the highest recorded figure. A PSA 7 made $96 in June 2023. A Beckett 7.5 made $85 as a Buy Now at Fanatics Collect in August 2026 - a fixed price rather than an auction, which is a different kind of evidence and is marked as such in the table.

Two entries carry grades that do not appear in the population ladder above. A PSA 8.5 made $183 in August 2025 and a PSA 4.5 made $7 in June 2023.

Those are half grades. The figures on this site are base grades only, on every card and every set, because a cumulative ladder needs one row per grade. PSA's own report counts half grades separately and so do we - which is why 2,709 here against the 2,843 an aggregator will show you.

The PSA 4.5 needs one more caveat. That $7 is the winning bid with no buyer's premium added, where every other figure on this page includes it. It is not comparable to the rest and we would not use it to price anything.

population

PSA

graded elsewhere

recorded 27 sep 2026. figures are a snapshot on that date, not a live count.

recorded sales

dated past results. the label after each venue says how the sale happened, because a private sale and an auction result are different evidence. 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 lives. There are 719 of them, more than any other grade, and it is the obvious buy for most people.

PSA 9, at 262 copies, is the sensible stretch. PSA 10 has 25 copies and one recorded sale at $5,033.

Look at SGC seriously here. It has awarded four tens in 276 copies, a higher rate than PSA managed in 2,709, and SGC holders on this set sell for less than PSA ones. That combination does not come up often.

Do not read Beckett's 6.0 per cent gem rate as a count of tens. It is one Pristine 10 and forty-two cards at 9.5. A single Beckett ten exists.

The sales record here is thinner than on most cards we cover - five results, four of them at one house. Treat any single figure accordingly.

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.

If you want the Oilers rookie class rather than this one card, Jari Kurri is at 107 and Glenn Anderson at 108, four and three cards away.

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 Coffey is 111 in it.

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

If the grade carries a half point - an 8.5 or a 4.5 - it will not appear in the population table on this page. That is deliberate: the figures here are base grades only.

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 rates add them together.

sources