1984-85 Star Michael Jordan #195

the card

notes

Cards 195 to 198 of the 1984-85 Star set are headed Olympic Team - 1984 Gold Medalist, and this is the first of the four. Vern Fleming, Sam Perkins and Alvin Robertson follow it.

The photograph is Jordan in a USA jersey, and the reason it exists is that the summer before his first NBA game he won a gold medal in Los Angeles. Bob Knight coached that team. It was the last amateur United States side to win an Olympic basketball title - the professionals arrived in 1992 - and Jordan led it in scoring at 17.1 a game.

Four of the five consensus first-team All-Americans of 1984 were on the roster: Jordan, Patrick Ewing, Wayman Tisdale and Sam Perkins. Star could only make cards of the ones who had reached the NBA, which is why the subset runs to four names rather than twelve.

So this is a Michael Jordan card, printed in the same set and the same year as his rookie, showing him in a uniform he wore for one tournament.

What it is not is the #101. That card sat on top of the Chicago Bulls polybag and gets the attention, the money and the counterfeits. This one sat inside a different bag and has always been the quieter of the two.

The population reflects that, though not in the direction you might expect.

PSA has recorded 551 copies. The most common grade by a distance is 6, with 242. Thirteen are PSA 8 and that is the ceiling - no 9, no 10, and none has ever been recorded. Nine came back Authentic.

Beckett has recorded 1,146, more than twice PSA's total, which makes it the fuller record of this card. Beckett's own ceiling is a 9, and there are four. CGC has five copies. SGC has none.

Across three companies and 1,702 graded copies, nobody has awarded this card a 10, and only four copies anywhere have reached a 9.

That is the same story as the #101 and for the same reasons. Star printed a difficult first series, sold it in soft plastic bags that did nothing for corners, and the cards have red borders that show every chip. The difference is that the #101 also had the worst seat in the house, face-out on top of the bag.

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

This is the cheaper way into a Star Jordan, and for some collectors it is the better one.

The #101 is the rookie and prices accordingly. This card is Jordan in the same set and the same year, from the tournament that made him famous before the NBA did, and it trades at a fraction of the price.

Beckett is the deeper record here with 1,146 recorded copies against PSA's 551, and it never stopped grading Star material during the years PSA refused. A card in a Beckett holder is not a lesser card on this set.

Set your expectations low. PSA's most common grade is a 6 and its ceiling is an 8. A 6 or a 7 is an ordinary good example of this card. Anything above that is genuinely scarce - thirteen PSA 8s and four Beckett 9s in the world.

The recorded sales show how thin that top is, and how unstable. A PSA 8 sold for $48,800 in March 2025 and another made $140,300 five months later. Same grade, same card, nearly three times the money. On a market this small a single motivated bidder moves the level.

Signed copies are a separate market. A period-signed PSA 5 with a 7 autograph made $140,300 in March 2026 - the same figure as an unsigned PSA 8, from a card three grades lower.

Buy graded and verify the certificate. Everything true of the #101 about counterfeits is true here.

what to check before you buy

Verify the certificate number with the grading company. US Marshals once seized more than 125,000 cards believed to be Star fakes, and PSA declined to grade the material at all for years afterwards. A raw card is an assertion.

Check the border. On known fakes it is noticeably thicker than it should be, and sometimes the wrong shade. The 1984-85 set uses a single colour per card chosen to match the team, and on the Olympic subset that is the USA red.

Expect chipping on the red border and check all four edges for it.

Expect the card to be off-centre. Star's first series was badly printed by its own standards, with enough miscuts that cards were destroyed rather than sold.

Read the label for the card number as well as the year. Jordan has three cards in this set - 101, 195 and 288 - plus further cards in the 1985-86 Star issues. Listings frequently give the year and not the number.

And check whether you are being offered the Olympic card or the rookie. Both are 1984 Star, both are Michael Jordan, and they are not the same card or the same price.

sources