Jordan rookie clears $25,100 on 44 bids

A PSA 8.5 copy of the 1986-87 Fleer #57 drew 44 bidders to $25,100 — just under the $25,499 BGS 9 that sold outright the same day.

A 1986-87 Fleer #57 Michael Jordan rookie in a PSA 8.5 holder sold Sunday for $25,100 after 44 bids. It was not the day’s largest sale: a BGS 9 copy of the same card went for $25,499 on a buy-it-now with 0 bids.

Why it matters

The #57 is the Jordan rookie, and on Sunday it filled four of the five most notable sports collectibles sales we tracked — at four grades, from two graders. The spread between those copies is more informative than the top figure.

By the numbers

• $25,499 — a BGS 9, bought outright at 0 bids. The largest confirmed sale of the day.
• $25,100 — the PSA 8.5, auctioned to 44 bids. Second by price, first by competition.
• $13,412 and $12,283.33 — a BGS 8.5 on 33 bids, and a PSA 7 on 38.

Zoom in

Two of those copies carry the same number. The PSA 8.5 took $25,100; the BGS 8.5 took $13,412. Grading scales are not interchangeable, and a shared digit across two companies is not a shared market — Saturday’s edition found the same lesson inside a single company, where two copies at an identical PSA grade split on a centring qualifier. The PSA slab here also carries a third-party eye-appeal sticker from a separate firm: a designation, not a grade, and no part of the 8.5.

Reality check

We pulled 106 comparable sales for this card and are quoting no median against them. The pool ran from $20.00 to $59,999.99 — several different products averaged together rather than one card’s market. Valuing off the wrong peer group reads as rigorous and is wrong anyway, which is the same discipline behind how this method reads an equity.

• 538 qualifying single-card Jordan sales Sunday — 453 confirmed paid, totalling $698,199.71 at a $588.95 median.
• 85 of the day’s sales were accepted best offers, where eBay publishes the asking price and never the figure that settled.
• 85 bids — the most contested card of the day was not a rookie at all, but a 1989 Hoops #200 PSA 10 at $542.00.

How we track this

RazMania monitors completed eBay sales daily, filtering out multi-card lots, reprints, non-card merchandise and cross-listed items to isolate genuine single-card sales. Prices are final sold prices. This edition quotes no comparable-sale median: the 106-sale baseline pool for the 1986-87 Fleer #57 spanned $20.00 to $59,999.99 and was rejected as too mixed to be a like-for-like comparison. The trailing context window measured 57 days, not 90. eBay reports sold date, not sold time.