1987 Topps Baseball Cards Most Valuable: What the Top Cards Really Sell For

Which 1987 Topps baseball cards are most valuable? The top 15 by PSA 10 sales

Here's the top 15 by PSA 10 median. The sale counts matter more than they look. A median on two or three sales is a hint, not a price, so read Will Clark and George Brett as rough.

Bonds alone is about 43% of the set's clean dollars, roughly $28,800 of $67,000. Bo Jackson is another 17%. Nothing else comes close, which I think surprises people who assume a Hall of Fame name like Gwynn or Ripken must carry real weight here. They don't. A Cal Ripken #784 in PSA 10 went for about $77 at the median, on two sales.

The rookies are a quieter story than you'd guess. Barry Larkin #648 and Rafael Palmeiro #634 both carry an RC mark, and a PSA 10 of either sells for $36 to $56. Mark McGwire #366 isn't a true rookie (that's the 1985 Topps Olympic card), but it outsells both of them several times over, about 194 clean sales to Larkin's 57.

Why is the 1987 Topps Barry Bonds #320 worth the most?

It's his first card in the main Topps set, it's the card most people actually own, and it's been climbing. His earliest Topps card is actually the 1986 Topps Traded #11T, but collectors treat the 1987 #320 as the rookie, and checklists print RC beside it. It traded about 870 times in our feed this year, more than any other card in the set.

That's a real move, probably the clearest one in any junk-wax base card we follow. May's PSA 10 sales sat around $830. By late October three straight sales cleared $1,000, with the top at $1,450 on October 27. Will it hold? Hard to say from 16 sales. The rebound framing in our junk wax rebound report covers the longer arc, back to the roughly $110 comps of 2020.

Below the 10, the card is ordinary. PSA 9 runs about $48 on 62 sales, PSA 8 about $16, and a raw copy about $3. So the gap between a 9 and a 10 is close to 18 times, and that ratio is the whole economic story of this set. Our gem multiple explainer walks through why that number matters.

Are raw 1987 Topps cards worth anything?

Mostly no, and that's fine. On our catalog grid, 790 of the 792 cards sit under $2 raw, and the set-wide raw median is about $1.12. A complete set lists at about $26 on 42 recorded sales, which is less than what a lot of single modern rookies go for.

The graded side is where the money lives. Of the 3,157 clean sales, 1,006 were slabs, about a third. Those slabs took about $53,000 of the $67,000, roughly 79%. PSA 10 alone was 242 sales and about $35,000. If you're holding raw cards, the honest read is that the value is in the one or two that might grade, not in the stack.

Bo Jackson #170 is the good test case. Raw, it's $2.50. A PSA 9 sells around $35, and a PSA 10 around $380 on 15 sales, with the top at $410. It's on the Future Stars subset, and Bo's two-sport fame keeps a steady crowd of buyers on it. Most of them want the slab.

Why do some 1987 Topps commons sell for over $100 in PSA 10?

Because the borders are brutal. The dark wood-grain frame shows every nick on the edges and corners, so a true 10 is rare even on a card nobody collects. On our grid, 50 cards carry a PSA 10 price of $100 or more. 38 of those 50 have fewer than 20 recorded sales.

That's the trap. A Frank White #692 shows $200 in PSA 10 on six recorded sales. Bob Grich #677 shows about $169 on eight. Those numbers are real asks that sometimes fill, usually to a set-registry builder who needs that exact slot. I wouldn't call them prices you can count on. If you've got a sharp common and you're thinking about grading it for the registry crowd, check the PSA population first and expect the sale to take a while.

How much more is a 1987 Topps Tiffany card worth?

A lot more. Tiffany was Topps' premium version, the same checklist on whiter stock with a glossy coating, sold as boxed factory sets. Baseballcardpedia puts the 1987 run at about 30,000 sets, against regular wax counted in the millions of packs. That gap shows up in every grade.

So the Tiffany multiple at PSA 10 runs about 3 to 5.5 times the regular card, and the raw gap is bigger still, roughly 7 to 30 times depending on the name. The best Tiffany sale we saw was a Bonds #320 in SGC 10 at $7,800 on May 18, 2026. A sealed Tiffany complete set lists at about $518 on our grid, on only three recorded sales, so treat that one loosely.

How do you tell them apart? Hold the card at an angle under a light. Tiffany backs are bright white and the fronts have a hard shine, while the regular cards have grey cardboard backs and a flatter finish. Sellers sometimes leave the word Tiffany out of a title, and sometimes add it when it isn't one, so check the back photo every time.

Which 1987 Topps error cards are worth money?

Fewer than the internet suggests. The set has a short list of documented errors and variations, and none of them is a big-money card the way some 1989 and 1990 errors are.

The two All-Star corrections, Gooden #603 and Mattingly #606, are the only ones with a real graded market, and even there the PSA 10 trade is under $140. We also hold a single Bonds #320 "double misprint" row at about $3 raw. Printing flaws on a card made in this volume are common enough that they rarely move the price.

How does 1987 Topps compare with Donruss, Fleer and the other 1987 sets?

Topps did the most volume, about $108,000 recorded across all its sales this year before cleaning, but it isn't the priciest 1987 product card for card. Donruss did about $65,000 and Fleer about $24,000. The odd part is that the Bonds cards from Donruss and Fleer trade at lower PSA 10 prices than Topps, probably because Topps is the version the hobby picked as "the" Bonds.

Greg Maddux is the big name missing from 1987 Topps. His first cards are the 1987 Donruss #36, the Donruss Rookies #52, the Fleer Update and the Topps Traded #70T, which sells in PSA 10 for about $159 on 61 sales, more 10s than any regular Topps card. Leaf, the Canadian Donruss twin, is the thin, expensive corner. That $7,589 Bonds is one sale, so we wouldn't plan around it.

For the rest of the decade, our 1980s cards hub covers the run from the Henderson rookie to the 1989 Upper Deck year, and the 1988 year page picks up where this one ends.

Is a 1987 Topps wax box or complete set worth buying?

As a rip, maybe for fun. As an investment, I'd pass. Wax boxes held 36 packs of 17 cards, and a pack cost 40 cents at the counter. Our grid shows a sealed hobby box near $61, but on only six recorded sales, so the real number could be well off that.

Think about the math. A box gives you about 600 cards from a 792-card set, so you'll likely see one Bonds, maybe two. The chance any one of them is a PSA 10 is small, given the borders. A complete set at about $26 is the cheaper way to own every card, and it's what most people buy.

How we built this page

The prices come from real sold prices recorded across eBay, Fanatics Collect, Goldin and the other auction houses we follow, from November 3, 2025 to November 3, 2026. We matched each sale to its card in our catalog, then cleaned it by hand in a few places where the feed is messy for this set:

• Tiffany sales are often filed against the regular card. We pulled out any title with the word Tiffany and priced those separately, which is why the regular Bonds PSA 10 top is $1,450 and not $4,680.
• Signed copies sit on the same card rows. Anything with auto, signed, JSA or COA in the title is out.
• Off-brand slabs get listed as gem mint 10. We only counted a PSA 10 when the title says PSA.

Grid prices are our catalog's current values for each card and grade. They're useful for the long tail, but on thin cards they lean on asks. Our card valuation method and methodology page have the full detail.

Frequently asked questions

Which 1987 Topps card is worth the most?

The Barry Bonds #320 is the top card in the set. A PSA 10 sold for a median of about $890 across 16 sales in the last year, and the October 2026 sales ran $1,050 to $1,450. A raw copy sells for about $3.

How much is a 1987 Topps Bo Jackson worth?

A 1987 Topps Bo Jackson #170 sells for about $2.50 raw, about $35 in PSA 9 and about $380 in PSA 10, based on 15 PSA 10 sales in the last 12 months. The Tiffany version of the same card brought a median of about $1,830 in PSA 10.

Are 1987 Topps baseball cards worth anything?

Most are not. 790 of the 792 cards carry a raw price under $2, and a complete set sells for about $26. The money sits in graded copies: PSA 10 examples of Bonds, Bo Jackson, Nolan Ryan, Mark McGwire and Pete Rose all sell above $200.

Is the 1987 Topps Barry Bonds a rookie card?

Most collectors call it his rookie, and checklists mark it RC, but his first Topps card is the 1986 Topps Traded #11T. The 1987 Topps #320 is his first card in the main Topps set, which is why it trades about 870 times a year in our feed.

What is the difference between 1987 Topps and 1987 Topps Tiffany?

Tiffany cards share the regular 792-card checklist but were printed on whiter stock with a glossy coating, in a run of about 30,000 boxed sets. A Tiffany Bonds #320 PSA 10 sold for a median of about $4,440, roughly five times the regular card.

Is it worth grading 1987 Topps cards?

Only for the top names and only for copies with clean wood-grain borders. A Bonds PSA 9 sells for about $48, which barely covers a grading fee. The payoff is a PSA 10 near $890, and most raw copies miss it because the dark borders show every chip.