A new all-time sales record for a Bill Russell trading card was set Thursday night (5/11/23) in PWCC Marketplace’s May Vintage Premier Auction!

This 1957 Topps Bill Russell rookie card – graded to a PSA 8.5 and awarded a PWCC-A Eye Appeal designation – sold for $660,000, now the third-highest public sale of a pre-1980 basketball trading card according to public data sets.

The card sits behind these two sales:

  • 1948 Bowman George Mikan rookie card, graded to a PSA 9, which sold for $800,000 in March 2022
  • 1961 Fleer Wilt Chamberlain rookie card, graded to a PSA 9 and awarded a PWCC-S designation, which sold for $670,000 via a confirmed private sale in June 2022.

"It's worth looking beyond the sales price and taking a moment to appreciate the quality of this card from a historical perspective," said Jesse Craig, Vice President of Sales at PWCC Marketplace. "There are no PSA 10 copies of this card and just three PSA 9 copies in existence. None of those 9s have ever surfaced at public auction.

 

There are two copies of the card graded to a PSA 8.5 and this copy holds above average eye appeal according to our experts. When you take all of that into consideration it is possible that this is the best-looking copy of the card to exist in the world. What isn't debatable is that we're in the museum-quality range with this card. We're looking at a true artifact celebrating one of the all-time greats."

Bill Russell’s rookie is one of eleven vintage basketball cards to set new player records over the last week through PWCC. The following records were set in the PWCC Weekly Auction or Vintage PA: