1948 Bowman #69 George Mikan — 40 PSA 1s, Five Times Any Other Card in the Set, and One of Its Twelve PSA 10s

PSA has graded 40 copies of 1948 Bowman #69 George Mikan a PSA 1. No other card in the 72-card set has more than eight.

The same card also holds one PSA 10. In a set where perfect copies barely exist, the most famous card is one of the few that has one, and it is also the card with by far the most copies at the bottom of the scale.

The Player

The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame calls Mikan "basketball's original superstar," and opens his biography with a Madison Square Garden marquee that read "George Mikan vs. Knicks." At 6-foot-10 he played for Ray Meyer at DePaul, where, the Hall says, he and Bob Kurland blocked so many shots that the NCAA introduced a rule against goaltending in 1944. He led DePaul to the 1945 NIT title.

As a pro, the Hall credits him with seven championships across three leagues, the NBL, the BAA and the NBA, and with leading all three in scoring. The Associated Press voted him the greatest player of the first half-century. His 1948 Bowman card shows him in a Lakers jersey, driving with the ball against a blue background.

Twelve Gem Mints, Each One a Single

This blog walked every PSA CardFacts entry for the set, 124 in all across the 72 cards, on September 25, 2026. Together they hold 13,231 graded copies on PSA's straight scale and exactly twelve PSA 10s, a set-wide gem rate of 0.09 percent.

Those twelve are spread one apiece across twelve different cards. No card in 1948 Bowman has a second PSA 10. Mikan's is one of them, which puts the set's biggest name alongside Mel Riebe, Bruce Hale and a play-diagram card titled "Double Cut Off Post" as the owner of a single perfect copy.

Above the PSA 8 line, Mikan is thin. He has four PSA 9s and the one 10. That is five copies at 9 or better out of 414, a rate of 1.21 percent against 2.0 percent for the set, and it ranks 54th of 72. Eddie Ehlers, card #19, leads the set with eleven PSA 9s.

Forty at the Bottom

The low end is where Mikan's population stands apart. Merging the card's three catalogued entries, PSA has graded 40 copies a 1. Andy Phillip, next on that list, has eight. William Holzman, Jim Pollard and Carl Braun have seven each.

Mikan's 40 PSA 1s also outnumber his PSA 8s, 9s and 10s combined, which total 29. Across the whole curve, 169 of his 414 graded copies, 40.8 percent, sit at PSA 4 or lower. Only Carl Braun, the set's final card at #72, has a larger share down there. Mikan's most common numeric grade is a 4, with 58 copies. Half the set, 36 cards, peaks at PSA 6 outright.

Analysis: The population data show where Mikan's copies landed. They do not show why. What can be said is that the set's biggest name has by far its heaviest count of PSA 1s, and his single PSA 10 sits on top of the most worn-down population of any card on the checklist.

Three Entries for One Card

PSA catalogs Mikan as three separate entries. Most copies sit on the main one, 384 graded. Twenty-six more are catalogued as "NO RED INK ON FRONT" and four as "NO RED/OVERPRINT BACK." Only four of those 30 carry a number grade: one PSA 1, two PSA 2s and one PSA 7.

The split is not unique to Mikan. It runs through the back half of the set. Thirty-two of the 36 cards from #37 through #72 carry at least one of those variety entries in PSA's catalog. None of the first 36 does.

It also decides one ranking. Counting only the main entry, Mikan is the second-most-graded card in the set, 384 to William Holzman's 410. With the two variety entries included, he is first, 414 to 410, and 481 to 462 once half and qualified grades are counted as well.

The copy pictured here is PSA cert 02035014, a MINT 9. PSA's cert page lists it at a population of four with one graded higher, matching the four 9s and the single 10 in the table below.

PSA Population Report

* Population data as of September 25, 2026. PSA population counts are dynamic and increase as more cards are submitted for grading.

Verdict: 1948 Bowman #69 is the card at both ends of its set's population. It has one of only twelve PSA 10s the set has produced, and it has 40 PSA 1s, five times the next card. For the player the Hall of Fame calls basketball's original superstar, the population shows a card that survived in quantity but rarely in top condition.