1958 Topps #47 Roger Maris RC: The Cleveland Rookie Card, 6,566 Graded and Not One PSA 10
Roger Maris's rookie card shows him in a Cleveland Indians uniform he wore for barely a season and a half. PSA has graded 6,566 copies of it, and not one has come back a Gem Mint 10.
The card is #47 in the 1958 Topps set, and PSA's own record for it carries the rookie designation. The slab pictured above is a PSA Mint 9, certification 30950993, and the card inside wears the 1958 Topps look: a solid orange background, his name in cream lettering across the top, the Indians' team logo in a black circle at the lower right, and a blue bar across the foot reading "OUTFIELD / CLEVELAND INDIANS." Maris kneels in a grey jersey with "CLEVELAND" across the chest.
The uniform on the card
Cleveland is where his major league career started. Maris debuted for the Indians on April 16, 1957, going 3-for-5 against the White Sox, and two days later hit his first big-league home run, a grand slam in Detroit. He finished that rookie season with 14 home runs in 116 games.
The team on the card did not keep him long. On June 15, 1958, after 51 games and nine home runs that year, Cleveland traded him to the Kansas City Athletics in a five-player deal, and on Dec. 11, 1959, Kansas City sent him to the New York Yankees in a seven-player trade. So the card in the 1958 set pictures a uniform that was out of his career by the middle of that summer.
The Yankees years are why anyone chases the card. Maris was the American League's Most Valuable Player in 1960, his first season in New York, and again in 1961, when he hit his 61st home run on Oct. 1 — in the fourth inning of the season's final game, off Boston's Tracy Stallard — to pass Babe Ruth's single-season record of 60. That came in the first year of the AL's 162-game schedule, and the commissioner, Ford Frick, had said publicly in midseason that a record set after the 154th game should be listed separately. Maris had 59 after game 154. His 61 stood as the major league record until 1998 and as the American League record until 2022.
He went on to win two World Series with the Yankees and a third with the 1967 St. Louis Cardinals, and finished his playing career in St. Louis in 1968. The Yankees retired his No. 9 and dedicated a Monument Park plaque to him on July 22, 1984. He died of cancer on Dec. 14, 1985, at age 51. The writers considered him for the Hall of Fame from 1974 to 1988, and he has never been elected.
PSA's population report for the card, pulled today, reads:
PSA Population Report
| PSA Grade | Population |
|---|---|
| PSA 10 | 0 |
| PSA 9 | 36 |
| PSA 8 | 354 |
| Total Graded (All Grades) | 6,566 |
* Population data as of October 10, 2026. PSA population counts are dynamic and increase as more cards are submitted for grading.
A population that peaks at the four
The most common grade for this card is not near the top of the scale. It is the middle. The full curve climbs from the bottom to a peak at PSA 4 and then falls away at every step above it:
- PSA 1 – 3: 273, 566 and 900
- PSA 4: 1,340 — the largest single grade
- PSA 5 – 7: 1,160, 1,143 and 756
- PSA 8 – 10: 354, 36 and none
Another 38 slabs carry an Authentic grade rather than a number. Put together, the grades from one through four hold 3,079 copies, close to half of the 6,566. That is the shape of a card that was handled, traded and kept in shoeboxes long before anyone thought to encapsulate it.
The top of the scale is where the population thins out, and it does so abruptly: from 756 at the seven to 354 at the eight to 36 at the nine. Those 36 are the best straight-graded copies of this card that PSA has seen, and the one pictured above is among them.
The qualifiers tell the same story from another angle. PSA has slabbed 475 qualified copies and 576 half grades on top of the straight population. The largest qualified group sits at the eight: 93 copies, against only two qualified nines. That is 93 cards good enough to earn an eight with a qualifier, next to 36 that earned a straight nine.
Maris was a Cleveland Indian for barely a season and a half, and his rookie card is where that uniform survives. After 6,566 trips through PSA, the card still has no Gem Mint 10, and the 36 nines are as high as it has ever graded.
