1951 Parkhurst #66 Gordie Howe — 50 Copies Sealed as Authentic, More Than His PSA 8s and 9s Combined
The copy pictured here sits in a PSA slab graded NM-MT+ 8.5, cert 20915377. Look past the label and the card does something modern cards rarely bother with: it prints the player's record on the front. Under the portrait of a young Detroit right wing it reads "1950-51 Record: Goals 43, Assists 43, Points 86, Min. in Penalty 74," and at the bottom, "No. 66 in the 'PARKIE' 1951-52 Hockey Series."
That season line carries more weight than it lets on. According to the Hockey Hall of Fame, Howe fractured his skull crashing into the boards in the first game of the 1950 playoffs against Toronto, lay unconscious on the ice, and needed an operation to relieve pressure on his brain. The 86 points on this card are the season that came next.
PSA's cert page for this copy returns a population of 2 at NM-MT+ 8.5, with exactly 1 graded higher. That one is the only PSA 9 of this card, and nothing sits above it.
PSA Population Report
| PSA Grade | Population |
|---|---|
| PSA 10 | 0 |
| PSA 9 | 1 |
| PSA 8 | 34 |
| Total Graded (All Grades) | 636 |
* Population data as of September 24, 2026. PSA population counts are dynamic and increase as more cards are submitted for grading.
The Most-Submitted Card in the Parkie Set
Every one of the set's 105 cards was pulled from PSA's population data for this piece, and Howe's is the one collectors have sent in most. His 636 straight-graded copies lead the checklist, ahead of Maurice Richard's card #4 at 583, and he stays on top when half grades and qualified grades are counted too, 774 slabs to Richard's 751. Terry Sawchuk's card #61 is a distant third.
Richard is familiar company for this file. CASE #0170 covered his card #1 from the following year's Parkhurst issue. In this one, he and Howe finish first and second in PSA submissions.
Fifty Copies Without a Number
The finding that separates Howe from the rest of the checklist is not in the table above. It is the number of copies PSA encapsulated as Authentic: genuine, but given no numerical grade. PSA's own grading standards list the kinds of cards that end up there, among them a card whose cut exceeds its visible border and one that is significantly undersized for its issue.
Howe's card has 50 of them. No other card in the set comes close. Richard is second with 20, and 33 of the 105 cards have none at all. Those 50 slabs are 7.9% of Howe's graded population, about double the next-highest rate in the set, Red Kelly's 4.0%, and against a set-wide rate of 1.1%.
Put another way, Howe's card accounts for about one in every forty straight-graded slabs from this set, and for nearly one in five of its Authentic slabs. PSA has sealed more of his cards without a grade than it has graded at PSA 8 and PSA 9 combined, which together come to 35.
A Curve That Crests at PSA 2
The shape of Howe's population says the same thing a different way. More of his copies sit at PSA 2 than at any other grade, 117 of them, with another 105 at PSA 1. Across the set, 57 of the 105 cards peak at PSA 7. Only eleven cards peak at PSA 2 or lower:
- Peaking at PSA 1: #1 Elmer Lach, #4 Maurice Richard
- Peaking at PSA 2: #10 Doug Harvey, #14 Boom Boom Geoffrion, #52 The Winning Goal, #55 Red Kelly, #56 Ted Lindsay, #61 Terry Sawchuk, #63 Alex Delvecchio, #66 Gordie Howe, #105 Jim Conacher
Analysis: That list reads like the set's own marquee. It holds the checklist's first and last cards, the two most-graded cards in the set, and two of Howe's own linemates: the Hall of Fame credits Lindsay as part of the original "Production Line" with Howe and Sid Abel, and Delvecchio as part of the "Production Line 3" in 1968-69. Population data cannot say why a card's copies skew low. What it shows is that in this set, the names collectors care most about are the ones whose graded copies sit closest to the bottom of the scale.
The top of the curve is almost empty for everyone. The entire set has produced six PSA 10s from 24,703 straight grades, and none of them is Howe's.
Mr. Hockey
The Hall of Fame's case for Howe is built on endurance. He scored in his first NHL game in 1946-47, finished in the top five in league scoring for 20 straight seasons, won the Art Ross Trophy six times and the Hart Trophy six times, and was on four Stanley Cup winners in Detroit. He played his final NHL season in 1979-80, at 51, in all 80 games for Hartford, and his combined NHL and WHA total of 975 goals is a mark the Hall notes Wayne Gretzky never reached.
The Trading Card Database lists this card as his rookie card. It is the start of the paper trail for a career that ran across five decades.
Verdict: 1951 Parkhurst #66 is the card collectors have trusted PSA with more than any other in its set, and the one PSA has most often handed back without a number. With 50 Authentic slabs outnumbering every copy at PSA 8 or better, the Howe rookie is a card where simply finding a sharp, full-size example is the chase.
