1986-87 Fleer Magic Johnson #53

the card

notes

Magic Johnson was in his seventh NBA season when Fleer printed this card, with three championships already won. It is not a rookie card and there was no earlier one to be - between 1981-82 Topps and this set, nobody was making basketball cards at all.

That gap is the whole reason the 1986-87 Fleer set matters. Five years without a mainstream basketball issue meant that when Fleer came back, players who had been in the league since 1979 got their first widely distributed card in the same set as Michael Jordan's.

Magic is card 53. Larry Bird is card 9. The two of them arrived in the NBA together in 1979 and are usually spoken about in the same sentence, and the population report has them almost exactly level: PSA has graded 8,089 copies of Magic and 8,125 of Bird. Thirty-six apart in a set where the Jordan has been submitted 28,151 times.

Then the two of them separate in a way nobody would predict.

Magic has 189 PSA 10s. Bird has 122. Same set, same sheets, same year, near-identical submission numbers, and Magic comes back gem fifty-five per cent more often.

Put against the rest of the set's headline cards the pattern holds. Magic gems at 2.34 per cent, Barkley at 1.97, Bird at 1.50 and the Jordan at 1.19. Only Olajuwon at 2.77 does better.

We do not know why. The obvious explanation offered for this kind of difference is where a card sat on the printing sheet - every card in this set appears once per sheet in a fixed position, so a card in a protected spot would grade better forever - but nothing published establishes which cards sat where. It stays an observation.

What can be said is that a Magic Johnson in PSA 10 is materially easier to find than a Bird, and both are far easier than a Jordan, and none of that is about the players.

The other three companies see the card differently again. Beckett has graded 1,384 copies with 81 at its gem level. SGC has 1,081 with six. CGC has 162 with none. That is Beckett running well ahead of PSA on rate, and SGC and CGC well behind - the same disagreement this site has found on every 1986 Fleer card it has looked at.

The sales are modest and stable, which for a card with 189 gem copies is exactly what you would expect. Three PSA 10s have sold publicly at Heritage: $7,801.20 and $9,000 on the same day in May 2021, and $8,400 in January 2022.

The two May sales are worth a second look. They were lots 81180 and 81409 in the same auction. The cheaper one is an ordinary PSA 10. The dearer one is a PSA 10 in an autographed PSA case - the holder is signed, not the card - and it made fifteen per cent more. Whatever that premium is, it is not for the cardboard.

population

PSA

graded elsewhere

recorded 02 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 one of the most affordable ways to own a PSA 10 of a genuinely famous card, and that is the whole case for it.

189 PSA 10s exist and three have sold publicly between $7,801 and $9,000. For a five-time champion in the set that ended a five-year gap in basketball cards, that is a low number.

PSA 9, at 1,642 copies, is common and cheap. PSA 8 at 3,375 is the single largest grade and costs very little. If you want the card rather than the grade, the middle of this ladder is unusually good value - it is the same photograph the ten-thousand-dollar copies carry.

Set expectations against the set rather than against the card. Magic gems at 2.34 per cent, the second highest rate of the set's headline names. A raw copy has better odds here than on the Jordan, the Bird or the Barkley.

Watch what the listing is actually selling. One of the three recorded PSA 10 sales was a card in a signed PSA case, which sold for fifteen per cent more than a plain one in the same auction. That premium attaches to the holder and does not transfer if the card is ever reholdered.

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 habit of verifying the certificate on anything expensive.

what to check before you buy

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

Read the red, white and blue border on all four edges. Colour runs to the edge on every side of these cards, 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 whole set and they are 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.

If the listing mentions an autographed case, understand what is signed. The signature is on the plastic and not on the card, and it does not survive a reholder.

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