Old-school Topps USFL cards drive high prices amid the current boom, but a USFL 2.0 set isnt comi ·

06 Jun 2024, 00:00

As a kid growing up in the 1980s, Worth Wollpert spent his weekends hitting trading card shows in the Cleveland suburbs.

He collected, and often traded, all sorts of cards, especially the 1984-85 Topps cards of the United States Football League. Defensive end Reggie White was of particular interest because of the terror he rained upon quarterbacks.

In its brief 1983-85 life, the original USFL produced several future NFL stars, helping the modest card sets enter into a sort of mythical realm within the wider card industry – with hefty prices to match on the resale market.

“I was as fascinated with them as much as anybody,” said Wollpert, 47, now an executive at Driveline Baseball, which offers custom training programs for athletes. “Reggie White was larger than life. I remember they looked so much different than traditional cards.”

The league remains the subject of fascination because it was the last serious challenge to the NFL’s television dominance. The springtime USFL spent wildly to lure top college and NFL talent but despite decent TV audiences, the league ended up bankrupt and out of business when it tried to move to a fall schedule for 1986. A number of books and documentaries have been made about the USFL’s brief existence – Donald Trump was infamously involved – all of which helped cement its role as a piece of cultural and sports nostalgia.

And today, there’s a USFL 2.0, using the original league’s names and colors, that just launched with games on Fox and NBC channels, albeit as a developmental league rather than NFL competitor. The Fox-owned league hasn’t disclosed trading card plans.

The current sports collectables boom, which turned white-hot when the pandemic began two years ago, has also elevated prices of the original USFL cards – but older collectors will remember they also commanded a premium during the early-1990s “Junk Wax Era” card craze. The most-prized cards with the best third-party condition grades sell for hundreds of dollars to tens of thousands.

Why?

Simple: The card checklist is a who’s-who of elite talent of that era.

Topps’ 1984 and ’85 USFL trading cards contained the rookie cards of future NFL Hall of Famers including White, Steve Young, Jim Kelly and Sam Mills. Other recognizable names included Herschel Walker, Anthony Carter, Ricky Sanders, Doug Flutie, Marcus Dupree and Bobby Hebert, all of whom would parlay USFL careers into NFL success. Gary Zimmerman, the Hall of Fame tackle for the Vikings and Broncos, played his first two pro seasons in the USFL but wasn’t featured on a trading card until the 1987 Topps line.

The 1984 and 1985 sets were sold in “factory set” cardboard boxes of 132 cards each rather than in packs, and reportedly had smaller print runs than Topps’ MLB and NFL sets of the time, which helped fuel genuine scarcity.

The USFL sets are notoriously difficult to assemble in the form of highly-graded cards. They’re often not perfectly centered and the fragile cardboard boxes for the sets sometimes meant damaged card corners. The backs of the cards are a dark pink that can fade.

“Nowadays, really nice sets that are authenticated are approaching a thousand dollars,” said Adam Martin, co-owner of Dave & Adam’s Card World in suburban Buffalo, one of the nation’s largest card retailers. “The cards are very hard to find in PSA 10 condition.”

Wollpert said he tried for years to build a fully graded 1984 USFL set but it was too pricey. He eventually got into other things but still has his prized Reggie White rookie card.

Courtesy of PWCC

Also making set collecting hard is a production aspect. An unopened factory set still sealed in the original box with the original closure tape – they were not shrink-wrapped by Topps – is something collectors chase.

“It’s very difficult to find any sets with that little tape uncut,” Martin said. “Even back then, it was very challenging to find them with the factory tape in place.”

A sealed case of the 1984 USFL cards would have included 100 sets, he said, and would have sold for about $500 back then. Today, it would sell for $100,000.

While trading cards from the legacy major leagues still command the most eye-popping prices, the old USFL cards are a niche product that can produce a nice payday for sellers. Currently on eBay, the largest site for trading card sales, the priciest USFL card in a PSA 10-graded 1984 Jim Kelly rookie card listed for nearly $4,500.

“This is a snapshot of what that alternative football looked like in the 1980s,” said Eric Norton, senior analyst at trading card price guide Beckett. “You look at the prices realized, especially the ‘84 set, those are cards that are iconic across the ages.”

And it’s not always the most famous USFL cards in demand. The next tier of players can generate sales in the hundreds of dollars.

Norton pointed to Hebert, the former Michigan Panthers quarterback who went on to a solid NFL career with New Orleans Saints and Atlanta Falcons. Hebert’s 1984 USFL card in top-graded shape can fetch about $100 or more, while his NFL debut card is a few bucks.

“No one cares about the Saints card,” said Norton, who feels the USFL cards represent some of the best old-school Topps designs. “Modern collectors don’t understand how great those cards are because they’re overlooked. Everything now is new and flashy … blue prism this and silver refractor that,” Norton said.

One of the major card auction houses said the USFL cards should probably command even more money than they currently do. They’re also part of the endless parlor game debate over what is a true rookie card.

“There are a number of USFL cards that are currently very undervalued as these serve as the true rookie cards for some key players from the 1980s and 1990s,” said Jesse Craig, director of business development for PWCC Marketplace, which auctions trading cards, via email. “The big rookie cards you’re looking for in the Topps USFL issue are all from the 1984 set: Reggie White, Steve Young, Jim Kelly, and Herschel Walker. These are all perennial Pro Bowl players and three of them are Hall of Famers.

“It’s important to note that most of the value of USFL cards comes from that 1984 Topps set. Even if you find a gem-mint Steve Young second-year card or a gem-mint Doug Flutie rookie card from the 1985 set, you are currently talking about values in the hundreds of dollars. The big cards from the 1984 set, meanwhile, are priced in the thousands or tens-of-thousands of dollars when found in high-quality grades.”

Within the trading card hobby, there is some debate about whether the USFL cards are true rookie cards, or if the player’s first NFL card is the rookie. Young’s rookie card is a good case study, Craig said.

“In March, we saw Steve Young’s 1986 Topps NFL rookie card, with him in a Buccaneers jersey, sell for $120,000 through the PWCC Premier Auction. That is the all-time record for a Steve Young card,” he said. “That sale notched a 240-percent increase over his previous sales record of $35,302, which was set in June of 2020. Now, some might debate if that 1986 card is his true rookie issue. The all-time record for Young’s 1984 USFL rookie card with the Los Angeles Express is $16,600, which PWCC sold in March of 2021.

Courtesy of PWCC

“As of April 18, PSA has graded just nine copies of the 1986 Topps Steve Young to a 10 and just 29 copies of the 1984 Topps USFL Steve Young to a 10. So there is limited supply on both. We think there are absolute merits to the value behind both cards, but the numbers suggest the USFL issue may have quite a bit of runway left in terms of growth.”

PWCC has auctioned a few USFL cards for hefty sums. The biggest sale was a PSA 10-graded 1984 Reggie White that went for $23,700 in March 2021, which the auction house said is the known record for any USFL card, based on public sales data.

Another notable sale was Jim Kelly’s 1984 card, a PSA 10 of which sold in January 2016 for $4,349.

Martin, whose card business opened in 1991, sold a Herschel Walker PSA 10 in January for $8,900 and another in March for $5,000. And because the business is in Western New York – Bills Mafia territory – they steadily sell Jim Kelly USFL cards.

“Broadly, the trading card market has never been hotter than it is now,” Martin said. “Everything collectable since COVID has skyrocketed.”

PSA’s population reports show only seven gem-mint Reggie White cards out of 1,974 graded. For Steven Young, it’s 29 10’s out of 2,553 graded, and Kelly’s rookie has had 44 10’s out of 2,164 graded.

Courtesy of PWCC

PSA president Kevin Lenane said about 30,000 USFL cards in total have been graded.

“It’s an interesting set,” he said, comparing it favorably to the American Basketball Association cards of the 1970s. “These cards are just as valuable. They’re not some alternative XFL universe where the players are substandard.”

Others in the industry are skeptical original USFL cards will gain much more in value.

“The USFL cards probably peaked about a year ago. But unless the cards are a high grade with a low pop report, they’re not particularly sought after other than for nostalgia purposes,” said Susan “Sooz” Lulgjuraj, a longtime card collector who has worked for both Topps and card valuation specialists Beckett and is now with Goldin Auctions.

Dave Rivetto, owner of the Grand Slam Sports Shop in Sterling Heights, Mich., specializes almost entirely in trading cards – a rarity compared to the early 1990s – and has a few customers that ask about USFL cards.

Last summer, he sold his last box of the 1984 USFL cards, which already had been picked clean of most of the best cards, for about $100, he said. He also sold a few USFL trinkets like a mini helmet and pennant of the Michigan Panthers – the team that won the first USFL championship and retains some local nostalgia relevance because of the Detroit Lions’ perpetual woes.

Customers that do ask about USFL cards typically are seeking the best available of the most famous players.

“People are looking for the high-grade rookie cards,” Rivetto said.

He’s been asked about cards for the new USFL but he’s not sure he’d carry them because he still has unsold boxes of the 2019 Topps Alliance of American Football cards. A theoretical set of cards for the new USFL could interest collectors betting on at least one player going on to NFL success. That said, some of the players already have cards from prior leagues or the NFL.

“There might be a little bit of a play there, but not much,” Norton said, adding that others may collect if they enjoyed a particular player in college.

If Topps, which since January has been owned by sports retail giant Fanatics Inc., does produce USFL 2.0 cards, they’ll join a long line of alternative football league cards that haven’t been particularly popular. These springtime developmental leagues haven’t produced a major NFL star perhaps since Kurt Warner came out of the Arena Football League in the late 1990s.

Topps made a 175-card base set, along with various chase cards such as parallels and autographs, for the 2019 Alliance of American Football league and the 2020 XFL. Both of those leagues collapsed before their seasons ended – the AAF because of bungled financing and the XFL because of the pandemic shut-down of live sports.

Topps also made a 100-card set of the 2001 XFL. It lasted one season.

The NFL-operated World League of American Football (later NFL Europe/Europa) had card sets beginning in 1991 from Pro Set and later Wild Card and Ultimate Trading Card Co. A number of legitimate NFL players and coaches came out of those leagues but nothing that’s set the card market aflame.

Older, more successful pro leagues that were on par with the NFL had cards, too. The AFL of the 1960s, which would merge with the NFL in 1970, had Topps cards — including Joe Namath’s 1965 rookie — that sell for handsome sums.

The All America Football Conference , which birthed the Cleveland Browns and San Francisco 49ers, didn’t have trading cards during its 1946-49 lifespan. But several AAFC players, including future Hall of Famers Marion Motley and Otto Graham, finally got cards in 1950 when Bowman produced cards of them in the NFL.

PSA’s Lenane will be among the first to know if new USFL cards are coming.

The grading agency has a deal with the USFL to certify game-used footballs, Lenane said, but no word yet on trading cards. Companies typically provide PSA with sample cards and checklists to facilitate grading – all part of the modern card ecosphere that’s as much about investing as collecting.

“I am sure it is happening. You’d be crazy not to,” Lenane said.

The league hasn’t commented on its trading card plans.

Martin, the Buffalo card business co-owner, has doubts about Topps and other card makers like Upper Deck and Panini being overly interested in USFL 2.0 cards. Why? Production capacity and supply chain issues, he said, and limited collector interest beyond a little speculation and a few super fans.

“They cannot make enough baseball, football and hockey cards,” Martin said. “I would foresee little interest in a modern USFL release. Maybe if some guy came out of there that became an all-time NFL great, the box could be worth thousands.”

(Top photo of Jim Kelly and the Houston Gamblers: Stephen Dunn / Allsport / Getty Images)

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Old-school Topps USFL cards drive high prices amid the current boom, but a USFL 2.0 set isnt comi

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