1986-87 Fleer Mark Aguirre #3

the card

notes

Six PSA 10 sales of card 3 are on record. They are not six cards.

Certificate 21722018 sold at Heritage on 22 March 2024 for $2,340. The same certificate sold at Goldin on 3 August 2024 for $2,808. One hundred and thirty-four days apart, two auction houses, and exactly twenty per cent more the second time.

That makes six recorded gem sales five physical copies. It also means the highest price this card has ever made and the third-highest were made by the same piece of cardboard.

We know that only because the certificate numbers were written down. Neither lot page said so.

Why Aguirre is card 3

The 1986-87 Fleer set is ordered alphabetically by surname. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is 1, Alvan Adams is 2, Mark Aguirre is 3 and Danny Ainge is 4. That is the whole reason a Dallas forward opens the set three cards in.

The timing is the part worth noticing. Card 1 is Abdul-Jabbar at thirty-nine, in his seventeenth season. Card 31 is Julius Erving in a season he had already said would be his last. Aguirre's card went into packs during the best year he ever had: 25.7 points a game in 1986-87, and the second of his three All-Star selections.

He had gone first overall in the 1981 draft out of DePaul, where he averaged 24.5 points a game across three seasons for Ray Meyer, and he was the first real star Dallas had. He was also picked for the 1980 Olympic team that the United States withdrew from the Moscow Games, so he never played in them.

In February 1989 Dallas traded him to Detroit for Adrian Dantley. He won the championship that June and another the following year.

What PSA has recorded

PSA has graded 3,067 copies of card 3 and 92 are PSA 10 - a gem rate of 3.00 per cent.

Within this set that is the easy end. Jordan gems at 1.19 per cent, Kareem at 1.59, Ewing at 1.63, Erving at 2.54 and Adams at 2.65. Aguirre is the highest rate of the cards from this set written here so far. The other end of the set is set out in the ten hardest cards in the 1986 Fleer set.

The population sits where it always sits in this set: 1,297 copies at PSA 8, 954 at 9 and 439 at 7. Eight is the biggest single bucket, as it is on almost every card Fleer printed that year.

Beckett publishes 8.1 per cent and has awarded one ten

Beckett has recorded 360 copies and publishes a gem rate of 8.1 per cent. Twenty-nine cards are counted in that figure. Twenty-eight of them are 9.5s. One is a Pristine 10.

SGC has 193 copies with three tens. CGC has 64 and none.

So of the 96 tens recorded anywhere across four companies, 92 are in PSA holders - a little under 96 per cent. That is the shape this site keeps finding, and it is set out across eight cards in what a published gem rate actually counts.

All of the money is in the top grade

Eleven sales are on record and they fall into three clean tiers.

Three PSA 8s sold in 2023, at $29, $26 and $16.

Two PSA 9s sold at $93 in October 2023 and $82 in February 2024.

Six PSA 10 sales run from $1,504 to $2,808, and every one of them sits inside a factor of two of the rest: $2,220 in January 2024, $2,340 in March 2024, $2,808 in August 2024, $1,504 in March 2025, $1,952 in May 2026 and $2,190 in October 2026.

An 8 made twenty-odd dollars. A 9 made eighty-odd. A 10 made two thousand and change. Supply does not move anything like as sharply: 1,297 eights, 954 nines and 92 tens. The last step in grade cuts the supply by a factor of ten and multiplies the money by about twenty-five.

The record is still the Goldin sale in August 2024, and both gem results since have come in below it.

A note on the evidence

All eleven sales here are auction results rather than fixed-price listings.

The Heritage figures were read from the lot pages signed in and include the buyer's premium. The Goldin figures are the all-in prices that site shows, which carry a premium of about twenty-two per cent. The October 2026 result is from the Fanatics Collect weekly auction listing itself, which drew twelve bids and is also the source of the photographs on this page.

Certificate numbers were read from the slab images on five of the six gem lots. That is how the repeated card was found, and it is the reason this site records them.

population

PSA

graded elsewhere

recorded 06 oct 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

PSA 8 at 1,297 copies and PSA 9 at 954 are where this card is cheap. Recorded sales run $16 to $29 at 8 and $82 to $93 at 9 - for a first overall pick, three-time All-Star and two-time champion.

PSA 10 is a different market: six recorded sales between $1,504 and $2,808, from 92 copies in existence.

Read those six sales as five cards. One certificate accounts for two of them, four months apart at two different houses.

The record is $2,808 at Goldin in August 2024. Both gem sales since have come in lower.

Do not read Beckett's 8.1 per cent gem rate as a count of tens. Twenty-eight of the twenty-nine are 9.5s, and Beckett has awarded exactly one Pristine 10.

If you want this card in a ten it is close to PSA only. Beckett has one, SGC has three and CGC has none, from 617 copies between them.

Aguirre is not in the eleven-card 1986-87 Fleer sticker set, so unlike Erving or Jordan there is no companion card to confuse this one with.

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 lands below expectation.

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

Look for print snow and surface specks under angled light. On this set that is usually what separates a 9 from a 10, and this card has 954 nines against 92 tens.

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 the slab reads #3. The set is alphabetical, card 2 is Alvan Adams and card 4 is Danny Ainge, so a mislabelled holder is easy to catch.

Write the certificate number down. Six gem sales of this card turned out to be five cards, and the only way to see that is to record the number.

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

sources