An autographed O-Pee-Chee copy of Wayne Gretzky’s 1979 rookie card has sold for $540,000 including buyers premium at auction this week.
The sale sets a new record for autographed hockey cards, but still falls well below the PSA 10 copies of “The Great One” which have fetched up to $3.75M at auction. This particular card was graded as a PSA 9 with a 10 rated autograph by the Professional Sports Authenticators.
“I played hockey growing up, I collect a lot of vintage, and I’ve never seen one of these before — there’s just one,” Kevin Lenane, vice president of Fanatics Collect, told ESPN. “It doesn’t seem like anyone could do what Gretzky did again either, I mean, he had more career assists than anyone else did points. As far as autographed hockey cards go, I don’t see anything reaching this mountain.”
According to population counts, this particular card is believed to be the only PSA 9 to feature Gretzky’s signature. Seven copies of PSA 8 cards feature an autograph, while there are no known copies of a PSA 10 signed rookie. In essence, that makes this card the highest graded Gretzky-Rookie-Auto in existence.
Other non-autographed versions of the OPC version have often fetched a quarter of a million dollars at auction if they were graded an 8 or above. Prior to this sale, it was modern era cards that largely dominated the all-time “autograph” market, with players such as Alexander Ovechkin ($381,000), and Connor McDavid ($405,000) sitting atop the records list.
In the same Fanatics Collect’s May Premier Auction, the company also sold a Josh Allen 1 of 1 Topps Chrome card for $1.35M, and a 2025 Topps Chrome superfractor of LeBron James for $1.26M. All in all, Fanatics Collect’s has generated over $100M in sales in May making it the most successful month on record for the organization.
Photo: Hakandahlstrom. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.