1986-87 Fleer Michael Jordan #57

the card

notes

Fleer put out card 57 in the autumn of 1986, and it arrived at a strange moment in Jordan's career. He had been Rookie of the Year in 1984-85. Then, three games into his second season, he broke a bone in his foot and sat out 64 games. The Bulls wanted him to stay out for the rest of the year. He refused, came back late, and dragged a 30-52 team into the playoffs against a Boston Celtics side with five future Hall of Famers on it.

On 20 April 1986, in Game 2 at Boston Garden, he scored 63 points. Boston won in double overtime and swept the series. The record still stands. Larry Bird said afterwards that it was God disguised as Michael Jordan.

So when this card was printed, Jordan had played eighteen regular season games in the previous year and set a playoff scoring record that has never been beaten. Then, in the season the set is named for, he scored 3,041 points at 37.1 a game, the first player to pass 3,000 since Wilt Chamberlain in 1963.

Whether this is his rookie card is a real argument rather than a settled one. Star Company issued three Jordan cards in 1984-85, two years earlier. The case for Fleer is that it was the first licensed Jordan card sold in packs to the public rather than in team bags to dealers. The case for Star is that it came first. This site does not adjudicate it, and anyone selling you a certainty either way is selling you something.

The photograph is the reason the card outgrew the argument. Jordan mid-air, legs tucked, ball cocked behind his head, on a red white and blue border. The set is otherwise a plain 1986 product. This one image is not.

Read the population carefully, because it disagrees with intuition. Nearly half of every graded copy - 45 per cent - came back PSA 8 or better. On the 1979-80 O-Pee-Chee Gretzky, the equivalent figure is 7 per cent. This is a far more common card that survives far better, because 1986 cardboard is better cardboard and because people knew to keep it.

One number does not fit the pattern. 968 copies are graded Authentic, with no numeric grade at all, and another 1,139 carry a qualifier. On a card this valuable, Authentic usually means the card is real but has been altered - trimmed, recoloured, or otherwise worked on. That is roughly one in every twenty-eight graded copies, and it is the clearest statistical evidence available of how much attention this card gets from people whose interests are not yours.

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

Graded, and verify the certificate before you pay.

This is the most counterfeited card ever made. Counterfeits have been produced for decades, they have improved steadily, and convincing fake PSA and Beckett holders are now in circulation as well. A slab is not by itself proof. Type the certificate number into the grading company's own lookup and confirm the card in the photograph matches the card in front of you.

Grade decides everything else and the spread is enormous. PSA 8 at 9,392 copies is the most common grade and the one most collectors buy. PSA 9 at 3,079 is a different market. PSA 10 at 335 is a different market again.

Below that, the card is genuinely obtainable. PSA 5, 6 and 7 together account for more than ten thousand copies, and a PSA 6 is the same photograph on the same cardboard as a PSA 10.

Two cheaper routes to the same set. The Jordan sticker came one per pack and is a separate card with its own market. And the other rookies here - Barkley, Olajuwon, Malone, Ewing, Drexler, Mullin, Dumars, Wilkins - are all in the same 132 cards at a fraction of the price.

what to check before you buy

Verify the certificate number with the grading company directly. Not the label, not the holder, the number. This is the single most important step and it takes thirty seconds.

Be wary of published counterfeit tells, including the ones you will find on enthusiast sites. Counterfeiters read those articles too, and a tell that worked in 2015 has been incorporated into the fakes since. Print quality is the general guide - genuine cards are crisp and dark, fakes tend to be fuzzy and misaligned - but do not buy a raw card on the strength of a checklist of features.

If you are buying raw anyway, buy from someone who will take it back.

On graded copies, read the label for a qualifier. OC, MC, ST and similar are not cosmetic; 1,139 graded copies carry one and they trade well below a clean card at the same number.

And treat an Authentic grade as information rather than a bargain. It means the card is real and something has been done to it.

sources