Jordan PSA 9 rookie takes $42,200 on 38 bids

Three grade states of the 1986 Fleer #57 cleared on the same day, led by a PSA 9 at $42,200 on 38 bids.

A 1986-87 Fleer #57 Michael Jordan rookie graded PSA 9 sold for $42,200 on eBay Thursday, after 38 bids. It was the most notable of 362 qualifying Jordan single-card sales that day — though not the largest.

Why it matters

The #57 is the Jordan rookie, and Thursday priced three grade states of it in one session. A single sale tells you a price; a ladder tells you what the market thinks a grade is worth.

By the numbers

• $42,200 — the PSA 9, on 38 bids, a confirmed auction result.
• $15,300 and $14,900 — two PSA 8 copies, on 34 and 33 bids.
• $11,300 — a BGS 8 copy, on 46 bids, the most contested of the four. PSA and BGS are separate scales and an 8 on one is not an 8 on the other, so read that figure beside the PSA 8s, not against them.

Zoom in

The day’s largest figure went elsewhere. A 1984 Star #101 — the first Jordan card ever issued — sold for $49,999 as a buy-it-now at zero bids, graded BGS 4.5. Two mechanisms, two qualities of signal: a price one buyer accepted outright, and an auction that needed 38 bids to reach $42,200. Neither was the day’s most contested card, which drew 91 bids and settled at $1,425.

Reality check

We pulled 105 comparable 1986 Fleer #57 sales and then declined to quote a median from them. The pool ran $1.49 to $59,999.99, with a p25 of $6,500 against a p75 of $16,800 — a 2.58x spread, past our 2.5x ceiling for brand-level matching. That is a pool mixing grades, formats or products, not one card’s market. Valuing off the wrong peer group is the mistake our stock-research sister project guards against on the equity side, and it looks every bit as rigorous while being just as wrong.

What's next

Four copies in one day is a readable curve, not a trend — one session is not a market. Watch whether PSA 9 #57s keep clearing well above the PSA 8s: if that step holds, the hobby is pricing one notch of grade as close to a different asset. More in our October 6 edition and the RazMania sports collectibles hub.

How we track this

RazMania monitors completed eBay sales daily, filtering out multi-card lots, reprints, cross-listed items and non-card merchandise to isolate genuine single-card sales. This edition covers 362 qualifying Michael Jordan single-card sales on October 8, 2026 — 293 of them confirmed paid prices totalling $483,602.89 at a $499.99 median, and 69 accepted best offers, where eBay publishes the asking price and never the settled figure. The comparable-sales pool for the lead card was pulled and then rejected as too widely dispersed to quote, so no multiple appears above. The trailing context sample for this run spans 53 days, not 90. eBay reports sold date, not sold time.