From the Index
Data stories and methodology notes, written from what the index actually tracks.
Star Wars14
Are 1977 Star Wars Stickers Rarer Than the Cards? The Pack Arithmetic, and What Happened After
Collectors treat the 1977 Star Wars stickers as the scarce half of each series because there was only one per pack. The pack arithmetic says each sticker was almost as common as each card. The scarcity came afterwards.
Behind the Camera: Why the Last 1977 Star Wars Series Showed How the Film Was Made
The fifth and last series of Topps' original Star Wars cards ends with more than twenty behind-the-scenes photographs: George Lucas directing, model builders at work, the blue screen, Tunisia. Why it happened is a guess. What it left behind is one of the set's strangest runs of cards.
The Cards Beat the Toys: Topps Had Star Wars in the Shops While Kenner Sold an Empty Box
Star Wars opened in May 1977. Topps cards were in the shops by June. Kenner's action figures did not reach children until 1978, and for Christmas 1977 Kenner sold an empty box with a certificate in it. For the first year of the craze, the cards were the Star Wars a child could collect.
Gum and Wax Stains on 1977 Star Wars Cards: What the Pack Did to What Was Inside It
Every 1977 Topps Star Wars pack held seven cards, a sticker and a stick of gum. The gum usually ruined the sticker. The wax wrapper ruined a card. Here is how each stain happened, how PSA grades it, and what you can and cannot do about it.
Five Series From One Film, and by the Last One They Were Out of Pictures
Blue, red, yellow, green, orange. The border colour tells you when a card was printed, and our own grades settle one long-standing claim about the set and contradict another.
Two Cards Stood Between Children and a Prize
Argentina's Stani Star Wars issue offered a prize for completing the album. Numbers 23 and 88 became known as the prize cards, because they were the ones nobody could find. Whether that was deliberate is a question the surviving evidence does not answer.
The Star Wars Cards That Came Loose in a Loaf of Bread
Sixteen cards, one per specially marked loaf, dropped straight into the bag with no wrapper. There was a mail-in offer, a second bread brand nobody remembers, and a set of unauthorised print runs that Fox was trying to stop.
Every PSA 10 in the 1977 Star Wars Set, Ranked From Rarest to Most Common
PSA has awarded 1,188 tens across the 66 cards of the 1977 Topps Star Wars first series, from 50,471 submissions. Two cards have four. One has thirty-nine. The full table, and why the pattern is not what it looks like.
Two Hundred Signed Lukes, One Hundred and Seven Signed Fords
PSA has certified 969 signed cards from the first series of 1977 Topps Star Wars. Card #1 and card #58 account for 307 of them. What that split does and does not tell you about Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and what you are really buying.
What Actually Happened to C-3PO on Card #207
For forty years the most notorious error card in non-sport was blamed on a prankster, a disgruntled employee, and a trick of the light. In 2019 Anthony Daniels explained what really happened, and it was none of those.
Star Wars Turns 50 in 2027. Here Are Eleven Cards Worth Watching.
Lucasfilm has put dates on the fiftieth anniversary: a restored 1977 print in February, an exhibition, a convention, and a new film three days after the anniversary itself. Here is what is confirmed, and eleven cards from that first film heading into it.
The 1977 Darth Vader That Sold for $206,250 — and Why Only Five Exist
Five PSA 10s exist of Darth Vader #7. One sold for $206,250 in May, having sold for $48,000 in 2023. The Luke Skywalker rookie is graded three times as often and has nine.
Why Are 1977 O-Pee-Chee Star Wars Cards Worth More Than Topps?
The Canadian version of the 1977 Star Wars set is scarcer, rougher and harder to grade. Here is what the population reports and the auction record actually say about what that is worth.
1977 Topps Star Wars #1: The $687,500 Luke Skywalker
A PSA 10 Luke Skywalker sold for $687,500 in May, up from $268,400 seven months earlier. Nine gem mint copies exist out of 4,683 graded. Here's the math.
Batman6
The Same Batman Card Exists in Four Countries and Only the Back Tells You Which
Topps in America, O-Pee-Chee in Canada, A&BC in England and Scanlens in Australia printed the same Norman Saunders paintings. The fronts are near enough identical. The copyright line on the reverse is the whole identification method.
ABC Thought Batman Would Be an Embarrassment. Topps Made Five Sets That Year.
The show tested as one of the worst things the network had ever screened, ran 26 months, and shifted $75 million of merchandise in 1966 alone. Topps compressed 236 cards into five sets inside the window.
The British Company That Printed America's Cards Smaller
Four men demobbed from the war founded A&BC in 1949, made chewing gum out of plastic to dodge sugar rationing, and from 1959 printed Topps sets for Britain in a reduced format. Their Batman cards are a separate market and they grade slightly worse than the American ones.
Topps Made Five Batman Sets in One Year and Ran Out of Ideas
Black Bat, Red Bat, Blue Bat, Riddler Back and Bat Laffs, all in 1966. The card counts fall, the paintings stop, the gimmicks escalate, and the last one is the hardest to find because by then nobody wanted a fifth Batman set.
Why the First Two Cards in the 1966 Topps Batman Set Are the Ones Everybody Wants
Card 1 is Batman, card 2 is Robin, and they sit next to each other in a set Topps printed four different ways in a single year. One of them asks forty times what the other does, and the number on the front is the least useful thing about it.
The 1966 Topps Batman PSA 10 That Does Not Exist
No PSA 10 of the 1966 Topps Batman #1 exists. The best copy on Earth is a 9 - it just sold for $131,250 at Heritage. Batman's first card, explained.
Superman5
The Superman Card Company Won the Case That Gave Athletes Ownership of Their Own Faces
Gum Inc. of Philadelphia made the 1940 Superman set, became Bowman, and in 1953 won the lawsuit in which a federal judge first named the right of publicity. Three years later it was bought by the company it had beaten.
The Scarcest Cards in the 1940 Superman Set Are Also the Best Preserved
Cards 49 to 72 had a shorter print run and reached shops in 1941. They are harder to find and they grade better than the common low numbers, which is the opposite of what scarcity usually does.
The First Superman Cards Are Rarer Than the Famous Ones, and Worth a Fraction
Two companies put out Superman cards in 1940. Leader Novelty went first with 36 cards on the backs of candy boxes; Gum Inc. followed in the autumn with 72 in penny packs. The second set is the one everybody knows, and the first one is scarcer and cheaper.
Superman's First Trading Cards, and Why Fewer Than One in Five Grade Above a PSA 5
PSA has graded 8,830 cards from the 1940 Gum Inc. Superman set. About 1,700 have come back PSA 6 or better. The reasons are a rubber band, a short print run, and eighty-five years of children.
The 1940 Superman Card With No PSA 9, No PSA 10, and Exactly One 8
PSA's population report for the 1940 Gum Inc. Superman #1 runs to 230 entries. One is an 8, and nothing has ever graded higher. The best copy the market has actually bought was a 6.5, at $40,000.
Mars Attacks4
The Card Children Were Told to Write On: Why the Mars Attacks Checklist Is Hard to Find Clean
Card 55 in the 1962 Mars Attacks set is the checklist, with a box beside every title for a child to tick. It turns up about as often as any other card in the set. Finding one nobody wrote on is the hard part, and it sells for several times an ordinary card in the same grade.
The Man Who Drew Mars Attacks Before Norman Saunders Painted It
Bob Powell pencilled Mars Attacks and three of the five 1966 Batman series. His work is underneath every one of those paintings. He spent a career signing as other people and got his largest credit thirty-two years after he died.
The 1962 Set Mothers Threw Away and Children Hid
Mars Attacks was pulled from sale within months, but that is only half of why it is scarce. The other half is that the people who bought it destroyed it, and the survivors are largely the ones a mother never found.
The Martians Were the Line Topps Could Not Cross
In 1962 a Connecticut district attorney killed Mars Attacks after five months. The strange part is that Topps had published the same gore earlier that year in Civil War News and nobody said a word. Plus the three things everyone still gets wrong about the set.
Tobacco cards4
Who Were Tobacco Cards Really For? Men Bought the Cigarettes, Boys Collected the Cards
The subjects were chosen for grown men who smoked: actresses, champions, dandies and flags. The collectors were very often boys, and by 1888 the New York Times was complaining about it. Historians now think the tobacco companies knew exactly who they were reaching.
Allen & Ginter Published an Encyclopedia One Cigarette Card at a Time
Fish, flags, birds, state capitols, chiefs, champions, beauties, dudes and the world's smokers. In three years a Richmond tobacco firm issued dozens of fifty-card series, and many of them printed the whole checklist on the back of every card.
Cigarette Cards Were Packaging Before They Were Collectibles. Probably Not These Ones.
The standard story is that blank cards went into flimsy paper packs to stop the cigarettes being crushed. It is well attested and it does not obviously apply to the Allen and Ginter sets this index tracks, because Ginter had already fixed the packaging two years earlier.
Geronimo Was a Prisoner of War When His Cigarette Card Came Out
Allen and Ginter's 1888 American Indian Chiefs set is one of the most collected non-sport issues ever printed. The men on the cards were not historical figures. Most were alive when it was issued, one was in federal custody, and another had two years to live.
How cards were made and survived4
The Album Told Children Exactly Where to Apply the Glue
Several issues this index tracks were sold with an album to stick them into. A card used as its maker intended tops out around a 2, and for some issues that is what every surviving copy looks like.
132 Divided by 55 Is Not a Whole Number
Every standard-size Topps card from 1957 to 1995 was printed eleven across and twelve down. A 44-card set divides into that perfectly. A 66-card set divides perfectly. A 55-card set does not, and the remainder is still visible in what you can buy today.
He Was Paid $50 a Painting. One of Them Sold for $48,000.
Norman Saunders painted Mars Attacks, three of the five 1966 Batman series, Civil War News and 478 of the 503 Wacky Packages. He worked to a flat fee, Topps kept the originals, and he was still taking assignments at 73 against his doctor's advice.
The Same Card Is Damaged in Every Set, and It's Always Number One
Average PSA grade for card number one against everything else in the same franchise: Star Wars 5.48 to 6.97, Batman 4.55 to 5.74, Superman 4.43 to 5.03, Mars Attacks 3.00 to 5.55. Four sets, four decades, four manufacturers, same result.
Everything else2
PSA, SGC, CGC or TAG? Which Graders Non-Sport Card Collectors Use, and What the Holder Costs
PSA grades most of the non-sport cards this index tracks, but not evenly: tobacco cards are split close to half and half with SGC, and Batman has the most cards in newer holders. At the same grade, an SGC copy asks about four-fifths of a PSA copy and sells for about two-thirds.
The Wrapper Outnumbered Every Card in the Set. Now It Is the Hard Part to Find.
Every pack of 1962 Mars Attacks or 1977 Star Wars came in a wax wrapper, so at the shop counter there were around ten wrappers for every copy of any one card. The wrapper was the part everyone threw away.