Stan Mikita's rookie card shows a bareheaded kid in a Chicago sweater who had just spent 119 minutes in the penalty box. Seven years later he would win the NHL's sportsmanship trophy, its MVP award and its scoring title in the same season. PSA has graded 457 copies, and none is a 10.

The Card

Topps gives Mikita card No. 14 in its 1960 hockey set, and the design is built from blocks of color. A blue square fills the upper left and a yellow one the lower right, with white in the other two corners. "CHI. BLACK HAWKS" runs across the top in black, using the two-word spelling of the day, and "FORWARD" sits opposite in orange. Mikita stands in the middle in a red sweater and striped socks, stick down on a puck, with his name in heavy black type at his feet.

TCDB's checklist lists the set as 1960-61 and marks this as his rookie card, and PSA's CardFacts record tags him as a rookie and a Hall of Famer. It arrived after his first full season, when he had eight goals, 18 assists and those 119 penalty minutes in 67 games. The year on the card went better. In 1960-61 he scored 53 points, then added six goals and 11 points in 12 playoff games as Chicago won the Stanley Cup.

The bare head is worth a second look. Mikita later became a full-time helmet wearer and even designed a model, and he was typically blunt about it: "I didn't have to worry about it destroying my good looks, either. I didn't have any to destroy."

The Player

He was born in Sokolce, in what was then Czechoslovakia, and at 8 he left for Canada to live with his aunt and uncle, taking their surname. He thought it was a short visit. The home he landed in was in St. Catharines, Ontario, where the local junior team was sponsored by the Black Hawks. "If you had written a script and tried to sell my story for a director for a movie, he'd have laughed at you," he said.

The young Mikita played angry. Bobby Hull called him "pound for pound, the greatest hockey player who ever played," adding that he was "tougher than a night in jail." He won the scoring title in 1963-64 with 146 penalty minutes and won it again the next season with 154.

Then, as NHL.com tells it, his daughter Meg was watching a game before bedtime and asked her mother a question: "Why does Daddy always sit by himself?" Mikita took the point. His penalty minutes fell to 58 the next season and to 12 in 1966-67. That year he won the Art Ross, the Hart and the Lady Byng, and he did it again in 1967-68. No other player has won all three in one season.

He played all 22 of his NHL seasons in Chicago and finished with 541 goals, 926 assists and 1,467 points. The Black Hawks retired his No. 21 in 1980, and the Hall of Fame inducted him in 1983. Mikita died on Aug. 7, 2018, at 78.

PSA Population Report

PSA GradePopulation
PSA 100
PSA 93
PSA 859
Total Graded (All Grades)457

* Population data as of Nov. 1, 2026. PSA population counts are dynamic and increase as more cards are submitted for grading.

The copy pictured here is a PSA NM+ 7.5, cert 14625866, one of seven at that half grade.

The full straight-grade curve peaks at PSA 6, then falls off hard at the top:

  • PSA 10: 0
  • PSA 9: 3
  • PSA 8: 59
  • PSA 7: 79
  • PSA 6: 100
  • PSA 5: 67
  • PSA 4: 66
  • PSA 3: 39
  • PSA 2: 24
  • PSA 1: 17
  • Authentic: 3

The steepest step is the last one. There are almost 20 PSA 8s for every PSA 9, and only 62 copies, about one in seven, have reached PSA 8 or better. PSA also lists 24 half grades and 21 qualified grades, a number grade with one specific flaw noted on the label. Nine of the qualifiers are 8s and one is a 9. That takes the card to 502 slabs in all.

Verdict: this is the first card of the only man to win the Hart, the Ross and the Byng in one season, from the years when he still spent his nights in the box. Only three copies have reached a straight PSA 9, and the 10 line still reads zero.