Two Hundred Signed Lukes, One Hundred and Seven Signed Fords
Signed Luke #1 Against Signed Ford #58
Sixty six cards in the first series of the 1977 Topps Star Wars set. Two of them account for a third of every signed example PSA has ever certified. Everything else is a rounding error.
If you collect signed vintage Star Wars, you are almost certainly chasing one of two cards. So let's put them side by side properly, and work out what that split actually tells you, because it is not the thing most people assume.
The Census
PSA/DNA has certified 969 signed cards across series one. Card #1, Luke Skywalker, accounts for 200 of them. Card #58, Harrison Ford As Han Solo, accounts for 107.
That is 307 out of 969. The third most signed card in the series has 30, and it falls away fast after that. Most of the set sits at one or two.
So on the census, Luke leads Ford by about 1.87 to one. Which sounds like a straightforward answer about who signed more, and it is not, but we will come back to that.
The Census Is Not the Market
Here is the thing that trips people up about a population report. 969 is a cumulative total. It counts every signed series one card PSA has certified since the service began, and none of those cards disappeared. They are all still out there, in collections, mostly not moving.
Signed vintage circulates far less than unsigned vintage. An unsigned card gets traded, upgraded, cracked and resubmitted, flipped. A signed one tends to get bought once and kept, because the person who wanted a signed Luke Skywalker badly enough to pay for one is not usually looking to trade out of it next quarter.
So the gap between census and availability is much wider here than it is elsewhere on this site, and it does not scale with the population. A card with twice the certified population does not offer twice the choice. It offers whatever handful of owners have decided to sell, which is a far smaller and far more volatile number.
Which is worth remembering whenever you see a population figure used as a rarity argument. 200 certified examples sounds abundant. It is not a statement about how many you could buy.
Every Single One Is an Auto 10
Look at signed examples of these two cards at the upper end and one thing is strikingly uniform. The card grades scatter all over the place, from beaten up low numbers to the occasional gem. The autograph grade does not scatter at all. Auto 10, almost every time.
That is not coincidence and it is not luck, it is selection. A signature that grades below a 10 is worth so much less that it largely does not reach this end of the market. A card can be structurally rough and still command serious money, provided the autograph on it is clean, well placed and unfaded.
Which inverts the usual rule on this site. For an unsigned 1977 Topps card, condition is everything and the difference between a PSA 8 and a PSA 10 is measured in hundreds of thousands. For a signed one, the card is close to a backdrop. The autograph is the asset.
Why Luke Leads on the Census
The obvious explanation is that Mark Hamill signed more than Harrison Ford, and the obvious explanation is not quite right.
Compare the actor portrait cards instead, where there is no ambiguity about whose signature is on them. #57 Mark Hamill As Luke Skywalker has 16 certified signed examples. #58 Harrison Ford As Han Solo has 107. Ford leads that one nearly seven to one.
So Luke's lead on card #1 is not about Hamill's availability. It is about which card gets handed across the table. Card #1 is the first card in the set and the most valuable card in the run unsigned, so that is what you bring to a Hamill signing. Han Solo has no equivalent flagship, so Ford collectors default to the card with his name printed on it.
There is a second effect underneath. A population report does not count signatures, it counts signatures somebody paid to certify. Ford's are scarce and expensive enough that almost every one is worth authenticating. A Hamill convention signature often is not. The census is a record of certification decisions, not of pen strokes.
They Are Not Competing for the Same Buyer
Which is the honest answer to "which one should I get".
The signed Luke #1 is the trophy. Flagship card of the flagship vintage set, with the flagship signature on it. If you only ever own one signed Star Wars card, that is probably the one, and it is priced like it.
The signed Ford #58 is the harder signature on the less iconic card. Ford does not do the convention circuit, and while he has done organised private signings, the supply mechanism is nothing like a queue at a table. If you think scarcity of the signature matters more than iconic status of the card, #58 is the one that gets overlooked.
And whichever way you lean, judge it on the autograph first. On a signed card that is what you are actually buying.
Both cards have a page here covering every grade, the live market and the sales this index has verified, and we track Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford across all their certified material on our sister site. You can read how we work the numbers out if you want to check any of this.