1960 Topps #148 Carl Yastrzemski — One PSA 10 in 11,640, and More Graded Copies Than the Set's Mantle
Eleven thousand, six hundred and forty copies of Carl Yastrzemski's rookie card have come back from PSA with a straight numeric grade. Exactly one of them is a PSA 10. It is the only Gem Mint example in sixty-six years, and PSA uses a photograph of it to illustrate the card.
PSA Population Report
| PSA Grade | Population |
|---|---|
| PSA 10 | 1 |
| PSA 9 | 45 |
| PSA 8 | 591 |
| Total Graded (All Grades) | 11,640 |
* Population data as of September 13, 2026. PSA population counts are dynamic and increase as more cards are submitted for grading.
Those 11,640 are straight full grades, and they include 43 copies that graded Authentic. PSA separately records 610 half grades and 628 qualified grades on this card, which brings the true number of slabs to 12,878.
The Curve Peaks at Six
The four-row table above is the standard, and on this card it hides the shape entirely. The full distribution does not taper off from the top — it bulges in the middle and sits there:
- PSA 6 — 2,569 copies, the single most common grade
- PSA 4 — 2,348
- PSA 5 — 2,148
- PSA 7 — 1,699
- PSA 3 — 1,306
Grades 3 through 6 account for 8,371 of the 11,640 — nearly 72% of every straight-graded copy in existence. Above the PSA 8, the card essentially stops: 45 nines and one ten make 46 copies, under four in every thousand.
The qualifiers tell the same story from another angle. Against 591 clean PSA 8s there are 208 qualified eights, and against 45 clean nines there are 22 qualified nines — close to one flawed copy for every two clean ones at the top of the card's range. A 1960 Topps card is a horizontal design with a coloured border, and centring is where these copies go to die.
It Has Been Submitted More Than the Mantle
CardFacts identifiers run in sequence through a set, which makes the neighbours easy to pull. Nine cards from 1960 Topps were checked for this case file, and #148 sits on top of all of them by volume:
- #148 Yastrzemski — 11,640 straight grades, 1 PSA 10
- #350 Mickey Mantle — 10,953, and zero PSA 10s
- #326 Bob Clemente — 7,848, zero
- #200 Willie Mays — 7,640, three
- #343 Sandy Koufax — 6,955, one
- #316 Willie McCovey — 6,354, zero
- #300 Hank Aaron — 5,547, zero
- #73 Bob Gibson — 4,258, zero
- #1 Early Wynn — 1,338, zero
That is nine cards out of a 572-card checklist, not the whole set — but it is the nine that collectors actually chase, and the rookie out-submits every one of them, including the Mantle by nearly seven hundred copies. Willie Mays holds the only multiple-Gem card among them.
The One Ten Has a Name on It
The single PSA 10 is cert 07063433, and PSA's database returns more than a grade for it: the item reads 1960 TOPPS #148 CARL YASTRZEMSKI DMITRI YOUNG COLLECTION, GEM MT 10. Young was a two-time Major League All-Star who assembled what SCP Auctions described as the finest collection of Baseball Hall of Fame rookie cards in existence — nearly 500 cards, including every Hall of Fame rookie issued from 1948 through 1990 — and consigned it to auction beginning April 30, 2012.
It is also the scan PSA puts on the card's own reference page. Open the graded example and the label is right there beside the card: 1960 TOPPS, CARL YASTRZEMSKI, #148, GEM MT 10. The only copy ever called perfect is the one doing the illustrating.
A Rookie Star, Listed at Second Base
The card front is a Sport Magazine 1960 Rookie Star: a yellow panel, red and blue ribbons, and a portrait of a 20-year-old in a Boston cap, captioned CARL YASTRZEMSKI — BOSTON RED SOX — 2nd B. That position line was correct the day it was printed. The Hall of Fame's own account has Yastrzemski as a second baseman in the minors who moved to left field only when Ted Williams vacated the spot for the 1961 season — so the card catches him in the last months before he inherited the most closely watched patch of grass in Boston. He stayed 23 seasons, won the American League Triple Crown in 1967, made 18 All-Star teams and was elected to Cooperstown in 1989.
The back is pure 1960: a minor-league line showing 120 games, 170 hits and a .377 average, a note that he led the Carolina League in batting and took its MVP award in his first professional season, and a cartoon reporting that Carl averaged 31 points a game playing high school basketball.
The verdict: this is a card the hobby has tested to exhaustion and found wanting. Sixty-six years, 12,878 slabs, and a population that piles up at PSA 6 and thins to nothing above the 8. The Mantle in the same set has never produced a Gem Mint copy at all; the Yastrzemski has produced exactly one, it carries a ballplayer's pedigree on the label, and PSA has been using its picture to show collectors what the card is supposed to look like.
