Misc.

Is Luke Skywalker’s Star Wars Rookie Card a Great Buy?

It probably sounds funny to think of movie characters and “rookie cards” in the same sentence. Movie stars are just not generally thought of in the same light as baseball, basketball or football stars. Nonetheless, the Star Wars movie franchise is among the best performing film assets of all-time. The 1977 Topps blue edition release of Star Wars cards would have to be considered the “Luke Skywalker rookie card.” The card is the first card in the set (#1) and is among the most desirable non-sports cards of the 1970s and 1980s combined. The only real issue is that the price of Luke Skywalker’s rookie card is becoming astronomical.

Collectors Dashboard evaluates high-end collectibles as an alternative asset class. This implies that the same capital which could have been invested in stocks, bonds, crypto and so on is being invested in things like sports cards, non-sports cards and so on. This is one of multiple follow-up reports analyzing the trends of 1977 Star Wars cards for collectors and investors alike.

Is Mark Hamill’s portrayal of Luke Skywalker going to remain popular in the future? With Walt Disney over the Star Wars genre, and with so many future potential films (and of course more Luke Skywalker cameo appearances), it would seem so. It simply doesn’t feel outside of the realm of possibilities that Luke Skywalker and many other character cards from the 1977 Topps Star Wars set will continue to have great interest in the years ahead.

Would you believe that a Luke Skywalker rookie card (the #1 card from the 1977 Topps blue Star Wars set) just sold for $5,280.00? That was the price after 48 bids in an eBay auction from November 9, 2021. What is even more amazing is that this sale was not even of a perfect PSA Gem Mint 10 grade — it was a PSA 9.

Another equally amazing feat is that an identical PSA 9 grade sold on October 8, 2021 for $7,005.00 on eBay. While the certification numbers were different, the card which sold this week is among the newer grades since all of the waits and delays started being seen.

The PSA Cardfacts site shows that there been only two different PSA 10 sales that have taken place over the last two years or so. One perfect gem mint PSA 10 sold for $6,877.77 on January 26, 2020 and a prior sale of $7,388.55 for a PSA 10 was seen on October 29, 2019. Both of those were before card prices went parabolic in late 2020 and in early 2021.

Of the 48,323 total graded examples 1997 Topps Star Wars issue in PSA’s population report, only 827 graded #1 Luke Skywalker cards are counted. Of those, and without qualifiers, there are only 9 that have been graded as gem mint PSA 10 and another 73 graded as PSA 9. SGC’s population report is just 138 Luke Skywalker #1 card examples, with only 1 at a SGC 9.5, 1 more at SGC 9 and just 4 more at SGC 8.5.

There is another Star Wars card set that may seem on the surface more difficult to find in top conditions that the blue edge 1977 Topps set. This is the 1977 Star Wars Wonder Bread set. The entire population of that set is just 8,344 cards in the PSA population reports. SGC’s total population for the set is just 438 graded cards. Luke Skywalker’s #1 card in that set has a similar PSA graded population of 805 examples, versus just 35 from the SGC population for the Skywalker #1 card. PSA actually has 66 which are graded as PSA 10 and 234 which are graded as PSA 9. SGC’s population has only 1 card at SGC ( and 2 at SGC 8.5. Those counts are impressive considering that the Wonder Bread set is all black similar to the 1971 Topps baseball card set.

A recent PSA 10 sale on eBay went off for just $1,710.00 on November 8, 2021. And a PSA 9 sale went off for just $150.27 on eBay on October 27, 2021. There have been fourteen (14) PSA 10 auctions of the black-border Skywalker rookie in 2021 before getting into repeat sales of the same grading serial number. There have been even an even larger 45 sales of PSA 9 examples of this “Skywalker rookie” in 2021 before getting into repeat sales of the same grading serial number.

One additional issue which may be keeping the interest strong in Luke Skywalker and other characters’ cards active in 2021 is that Topps has this ongoing “Star Wars Living Set” that was last seen with card #255 having been issued for an individual price of $7.99. These “living set” cards are of course modern and are never likely to have the same broad interest among non-sports collectors compared to the 1977 Topps set. Still, that is keeping at least some collectors interested.

Each one of the same blue designs from the “living set” that is going on now appears to have over 1,000 cards for each print run. The difference between 2021 and 1977 is that everyone now knows these have to be kept in pristine condition. And the Luke Skywalker card from the newer “living set” Here are some examples which had much larger print runs from the same blue border look:

  • The Child (“baby Yoda” #58) had a 9,663 card print run;
  • Yoda card (#167) had a 5,157 card print run;
  • Chewbacca (#200) had a 4,906 card print run;
  • The Mandalorian (#145) had a 4,283 card print run;
  • Darth Vader (#1) had a 3,909 card print run;
  • An older Boba Fett (#234) had a 3,700 card print run;
  • Padme (#224) had a 3,356 card print run;
  • and Mace Windu (#168) had a 2,985 card print run.

Stay tuned…