1984-85 Star Michael Jordan #101

the card

notes

This is the first Michael Jordan card a company was licensed to make, issued during the season he was actually a rookie. It is not called his rookie card.

Star Company held the exclusive NBA licence from 1983 to 1986 and sold in sealed poly bags rather than packs - team sets and subsets, through hobby dealers and at arenas. When Beckett launched Beckett Basketball in the spring of 1990 it designated the Star cards XRC, extended rookie cards, on the grounds that they were never widely available at retail. The 1986-87 Fleer at 57 got the rookie label instead. Both cards are real, both arguments are sincere, and this site does not adjudicate it.

What is not in dispute is why this card is so hard to find in grade, because the causes are documented rather than guessed at.

Card 101 sat on the outside of the Chicago Bulls bag, the first card facing the world through the plastic. Whatever happened to that bag in a dealer's box happened to this card first.

It also sat in the top left corner of the printing sheet. That position produced chronic left-to-right centring problems - there is nearly always a wider border on the right - and it meant more than ninety per cent of the cards were cut short of full height. A full-size 101 measures three and a half inches top to bottom, and most do not. A short card is normal here rather than evidence of trimming, which is worth knowing because somebody may tell you otherwise while offering to buy it cheaply.

The counterfeit history is the other half of the story and it needs stating precisely. US Marshals seized more than 125,000 cards believed to be Star fakes, and PSA responded by refusing to grade any Star card for years. Beckett graded them throughout. PSA has since resumed, which is why a PSA population for this card exists at all and why it is so young.

But the specific frauds that caused it - the Shop At Home material and the Type counterfeits of the late 1980s and early 1990s - are not held to have included this card. The set has a counterfeit problem. That is not the same as this card having been among the fakes.

The population is small and the top of it is very small. PSA has recorded 576 copies. Three are PSA 9. None is a PSA 10, and none ever has been. Thirty-seven came back Authentic with no numeric grade, which on a set with this history is a number worth noticing on its own.

That matters because you will read that a PSA 10 of this card trades above a million dollars. No PSA 10 has ever been recorded, and that figure describes a card which does not exist.

Nor does adding the other graders produce one. Beckett has recorded 1,281 copies of this card - more than PSA has - and not one is a 10; its best are three at 9.5 and seventy-three at 9. CGC has six copies and SGC none at all. Across four companies and nearly two thousand graded copies, nobody has ever awarded this card a 10.

population

PSA

graded elsewhere

recorded 29 aug 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

Buy graded, and think about which grader before you think about the number.

Both PSA and Beckett grade this card now, and Beckett never stopped. Beckett holds about two thirds of the graded population as a result, so its ladder is the fuller record of this card. A card in a Beckett holder from the years when PSA would not touch Star material is not a lesser card, and the recorded results bear that out - a BGS 9 sold for $103,700 in March 2025 while a PSA 7 sold for $106,750 that December.

Set your grade expectations to the card. The most common grade is PSA 7 at 162 copies, then PSA 6 at 138. A PSA 8 puts you among 34, a PSA 9 among three. Anything at 6 or 7 is an ordinary good example of this card rather than a compromise.

Eye-appeal stickers are moving prices here more than the grade is. In one Heritage sale in July 2026 a PSA 6 carrying an MBA Gold designation made $118,950 while a PSA 6.5 without one made $94,550 in the same auction - twenty-six per cent more for a lower grade. Six weeks later a plain PSA 6 made $82,350. Know whether you are buying the number on the label or the sticker beside it.

Signed copies are a separate market and a much dearer one. A PSA 6 with a PSA/DNA 8 autograph made $439,200 in October 2025, more than five times what an unsigned PSA 6 made ten months later.

And check which Star card you are being offered. Jordan has three cards in this set alone, at 101, 195 and 288, and further cards in the 1985-86 Star set and the Olympic issues. The year and the number both matter, and listings routinely give only one of them.

what to check before you buy

Verify the certificate with the grading company before anything else. This is a set where a major grader once declined to work at all, and where counterfeits were seized in six figures. A raw card is an assertion.

Expect the card to be off-centre left to right, with a wider border on the right. That is the sheet position, not a defect peculiar to the copy you are looking at.

Expect it to be short. More than ninety per cent were cut under full height, so a card measuring less than three and a half inches top to bottom is the normal case. If a seller presents shortness as a fault to negotiate the price down, that is a reason to be careful of the seller rather than the card.

Look at print quality under a loupe. On the known fakes the giveaway is clarity - text that looks photocopied, blotchy ink, and lines around the lettering that should be solid but are not.

Read the label for a sticker as well as a grade. On this card an MBA Gold designation has outsold a higher plain grade in the same auction.

And read the label for the year and the card number. 1984-85 Star, card 101. The 1985-86 Star Jordan is a different card and so are the other two in this set.

sources