1986-87 Fleer Julius Erving #31

the card

notes

The 1986-87 Fleer set is famous for rookie cards. Julius Erving's is not one of them - by the time it reached shops he had announced that the season would be his last.

He was thirty-six. He had been a professional since 1971, won three ABA Most Valuable Player awards before the leagues merged, took the 1981 NBA award, and won a title with Philadelphia in 1983. He finished with more than 30,000 points across both leagues, and this card marks the end of that rather than the start of anything.

The set does this at both ends. Card 1 is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, thirty-nine and in his seventeenth season. Card 31 is Erving in his last. Between them sit the first cards of Jordan, Barkley, Olajuwon and Ewing, because nobody had printed a mainstream basketball set since 1981 and five years of arrivals landed at once.

What PSA has recorded

PSA has graded 6,726 copies of card 31 and 171 are PSA 10 - a gem rate of 2.54 per cent.

That is the middle of this set rather than the hard end. The Jordan gems at 1.19, the Kareem at 1.59 and the Ewing at 1.63; the easiest cards in the set run above eight.

The population piles up where this set always piles up: 2,838 copies at PSA 8, 1,715 at 9, 1,193 at 7.

Beckett publishes 6.8 per cent and has awarded none

Beckett has recorded 1,051 copies of this card and all seventy-one of its published gems are 9.5s. Not one is a Pristine 10 or a Black Label.

SGC has 878 copies with two tens. CGC has 167 and none.

So of the 173 tens recorded anywhere across four companies, 171 are in PSA holders. That is the same shape this site keeps finding, and it is set out across eight cards in what a published gem rate actually counts.

Eight sales at PSA 10, and the venue matters

Eight PSA 10 sales are on record and five of them fall inside 2026.

Four of those five sold at Fanatics Collect, at $1,800, $1,800, $1,890 and $2,000 between June and September. That is a spread of eleven per cent across four sales in four months - about as tight as this site has seen at any grade.

The fifth, in May, sold at Heritage for $3,416. Nearly twice the average of the four.

Before that the card traded at $1,260 in May 2021 and $1,560 in both April 2022 and March 2024. So the Fanatics cluster sits a little above the older results and the Heritage lot sits well above everything.

One sale is not a venue effect. But four results inside eleven per cent of each other at one house, against a single result at nearly double from another in the same year, is worth a buyer's attention before reading any one figure as the price.

Everything below the gem

A PSA 9 made $279 in September 2026, $156 in May 2025, $251 in May 2021 and $186 in January 2021. A Beckett 9 made $134 in August 2025.

PSA 7s have sold five times in 2026 between $44 and $77 - including two on the same day in August at $65 and $67. A PSA 8 made $119 in January 2022.

There are 1,715 PSA 9s of this card and 171 tens. The gap in price between them is far wider than the gap in supply.

A note on the evidence

Nine of the nineteen sales here were read from the auction house's own lot page. Five came from PSA's certificate sales data and five from the sales history attached to a fixed-price listing.

Those are not the same quality of evidence, and the table marks which is which. A lot page is the auction house stating what something sold for; the other two are secondary records that we have not been able to confirm against a primary source.

One lot number in PSA's data turned out not to exist for the auction it named, and the correct lot was found and verified before this page was written. That is why the distinction is recorded rather than glossed over.

population

PSA

graded elsewhere

recorded 03 oct 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 at 2,838 copies and PSA 9 at 1,715 are where this card sits for most buyers. Recorded sales run from $119 to $279.

PSA 10 is a real market with depth - 171 copies and eight public sales. Four of them in 2026 clustered between $1,800 and $2,000 at Fanatics Collect, and one at Heritage took $3,416 the same year.

Watch the venue before you read a figure. The tightest four sales on this card were all at one house and the outlier was at another, within months of each other.

Do not read Beckett's 6.8 per cent gem rate as a count of tens. All seventy-one are 9.5s and Beckett has never awarded this card a ten.

If you want this card in a ten it is effectively PSA only. SGC has two and CGC none, from 1,045 copies between them.

Do not confuse the base card with the sticker. Erving is also card 5 of the eleven-card 1986-87 Fleer sticker set, and that card trades at completely different money.

Counterfeiting in this set concentrates on the Jordan and the Barkley. No fakes of this card are documented.

what to check before you buy

Check centring on both sides. It is the usual reason a 1986 Fleer card grades below expectation.

Read the red, white and blue border along all four edges. Colour runs to the edge on every side, so a chip shows immediately as white.

Look for print snow and surface specks under angled light. They are common across the set and are usually what separates a 9 from a 10.

Check the back for gum residue or wax staining. Packs held twelve cards, one sticker and a stick of gum, and the gum sat against the top card of the stack.

Confirm it is card 31 and not sticker 5. Both are Erving, both are 1986-87 Fleer, and they are different objects at different prices.

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

sources