1986-87 Fleer Larry Bird #9

the card

notes

Larry Bird was in his eighth NBA season when Fleer printed this card, with three championships and three straight Most Valuable Player awards behind him. It is not a rookie card. There was no earlier one to be.

Between 1981-82 Topps and this set, nobody made basketball cards at all. Five years of nothing, which is why a set issued in 1986 contains the first widely distributed cards of players who had been in the league since 1979.

Bird is card 9. Magic Johnson is card 53. They entered the NBA in the same draft, are spoken about in the same breath, and the population report has them almost exactly level - PSA has graded 8,125 Birds and 8,089 Magics, thirty-six apart in a set where the Jordan has been submitted 28,151 times.

Then they separate. Magic has 189 PSA 10s. Bird has 122.

Same set, same year, same sheets, near-identical submission numbers, and Magic comes back gem fifty-five per cent more often. Nobody has established why, and the usual explanation - where a card sat on the printing sheet - is not something anyone has published a map of.

What can be said is that Bird is the third hardest card in the whole 132-card set to find perfect. It gems at 1.50 per cent, behind only the Jordan at 1.19 and the Dominique Wilkins at 1.20.

The other graders see it very differently, and on this card the difference has been priced.

Beckett has recorded 1,407 copies and awarded seventy-four at its Gem Mint 9.5 level. It has never awarded a 10. SGC has 1,123 copies with four tens. CGC has 165 and no gem at all.

On 28 January 2022 a PSA 10 and a Beckett 9.5 of this card sold in the same Heritage auction as consecutive lots. The PSA 10, lot 51739, made $8,100. The Beckett 9.5, lot 51738, made $750.

Just under eleven times, same room, same afternoon, for what is arguably a half-grade difference on two different scales. It is the clearest measurement this site has of what the label on the holder is worth as distinct from the card inside it.

The PSA 10 market itself is unusually scattered. Seven have sold publicly since December 2020, at $2,340, $5,760, $8,100, $5,520, $7,200, $6,000 and $8,845. That is a spread of nearly four times with no direction in it - $8,100 in January 2022 and $5,520 four months later, then $7,200 two years after that.

For a card with 122 gem copies and constant trading, that is a wider range than it ought to be.

population

PSA

graded elsewhere

recorded 03 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

This is a cheap way to own a PSA 10 of one of the most recognisable players in the sport.

122 PSA 10s exist and seven have sold publicly between $2,340 and $8,845. Anyone quoting you a single figure is describing one afternoon - the range is nearly four times wide and shows no trend.

PSA 9, at 1,555 copies, is common and inexpensive. PSA 8 at 3,517 is the largest single grade in the population and costs very little. If you want the card rather than the grade, that is where to buy it, and it is the same photograph.

Pay attention to which company graded it. Beckett has never awarded this card a 10, so a Beckett 9.5 is the top of that scale - and one sold for $750 in the same auction where a PSA 10 made $8,100. That is not a comment on which card is nicer. It is what the market pays for the label.

Raw submissions are a poor bet here. At a 1.50 per cent gem rate you should expect roughly one 10 in every sixty-six cards you send, which makes this the third hardest card in the set to gem.

Counterfeiting in this set concentrates on the Jordan and the Barkley. No fakes of this card are documented, which lowers the risk without removing the sense in verifying a certificate before paying four figures.

what to check before you buy

Check centring on both sides. It is the most common reason a 1986 Fleer card grades below expectation and it is why this card gems at one and a half per cent.

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

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

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

Note the grading company as well as the number. Beckett's ceiling on this card is a 9.5 and PSA's is a 10, and they do not price alike.

On raw cards genuine printing is crisp and dark. Fuzzy or misaligned printing is a warning, though use it as a first filter rather than a verdict - published tells get built into later fakes.

sources