’70 Pistol Pete mint ‘tall boy’ card fetches $552K

That is one “tall boy” that you simply should not crack open.

A 1970 Topps Pete Maravich “tall boy” rookie card — an ideal, gem-mint 10 from card grader PSA — offered by way of PWCC Market on Thursday evening for $552,000, a document for any “Pistol Pete” merchandise, sports activities card or memorabilia.

The cardboard is one in every of solely two copies of the 1970 Topps Maravich card to obtain an ideal grade from PSA.

The Maravich card turns into fifth-most-expensive classic (pre-1980) basketball card behind a 1948 Bowman George Mikan rookie card ($800,000 on eBay), a 1961 Fleer Wilt Chamberlain rookie card ($670,000, a non-public PWCC sale) and two Invoice Russell rookie playing cards ($660,000 and $630,000, by way of PWCC and Heritage Auctions, respectively).

The Maravich card from the extremely sought-after set is the costliest 1970 Topps basketball card of all time.

Topps had beforehand made “tall boy” playing cards — playing cards with the identical 2 1/2 inch width, however 4 11/16 inches tall in distinction to the usual 3 1/2 inches — in hockey and in soccer, however the design did not make it to basketball till 1969, when Topps produced basketball playing cards for the primary time in additional than a decade.

The 1970 Topps set featured the identical “tall boy” design.

Due to their distinctive measurement, storing and sustaining high-grade “tall boy” playing cards has confirmed difficult. PSA has graded a complete of 128,783 Topps playing cards from 1969 and 1970, and solely 278 of these have come again graded an ideal 10 — a 0.216% success charge.

Together with the Maravich card, six different PSA 10 “tall boy” playing cards from 1969 have been bought Thursday for player-record costs: a Walt Frazier rookie card ($252,000), a Willis Reed rookie card ($150,000), a Nate Thurmond rookie card ($114,000), a Wes Unseld rookie card ($111,000) and non-rookie playing cards of Oscar Robertson ($186,000) and Jerry West ($180,000).

Up to now three months, based on PWCC, 34 information have been set by way of purchases of 1969 and 1970 Topps “tall boy” playing cards.