Under the Lakers banner on Jerry West's rookie card, one word sits above his name: FORWARD. The Lakers were using him as a guard, and he would become the guard the NBA drew its logo from. PSA has graded 1,598 copies, and only three are 10s.

The Card

Fleer's 1961 basketball set gives West card No. 43, and the design works from the top down. A yellow banner carries "LOS ANGELES LAKERS" beside a cartoon giraffe laid over a pink basketball. Below it, on a white band, comes the position in small black capitals, then "JERRY WEST" in red. The bottom half is a black-and-white West against a red-orange field, one arm stretched high out of the frame, with "Los Angeles" in script across his jersey and only the top of his number showing.

That position line is the card's small puzzle. West played forward in college at West Virginia. When Fred Schaus, his college coach, took over the Lakers in 1960, he played West at guard, and guard is where Basketball-Reference lists him. So his rookie card gives him the position he had already left.

TCDB's checklist lists the set as 1961-62 and marks this as his rookie card, and PSA's CardFacts record tags him as a rookie and a Hall of Famer. It arrived in his second pro season. As a rookie in 1960-61 he had averaged 17.6 points. In 1961-62, with Elgin Baylor limited to 48 games by Army Reserve duty, West took over as the team's main scorer, averaged 30.8 and made All-NBA First Team. He scored a career-high 63 on Jan. 17, 1962.

The Player

West grew up in Chelyan, W.Va., and the creek nearby gave him one of his nicknames, "Zeke from Cabin Creek." He took West Virginia to the 1959 NCAA final and won the tournament's Most Outstanding Player award despite the loss. He co-captained the U.S. team to Olympic gold in 1960, and the Lakers took him second overall in that year's draft.

The late-game shots gave him the name that stuck. Lakers broadcaster Chick Hearn called him "Mr. Clutch," and the Naismith Hall's biography says his teammates "always found a way to get the ball" to him with a game on the line. His 46.3 points a game in a 1965 playoff series remains the NBA record. He reached nine NBA Finals and won one, in 1972, and in 1969 he became the only player named Finals MVP from a losing team.

He retired with 25,192 points, a 27.0 average and 6,238 assists, and the Hall enshrined him in 1980. The NBA logo, designed in 1969 by Alan Siegel, uses a silhouette based on a photograph of him. West died on June 12, 2024, at 86.

PSA Population Report

PSA GradePopulation
PSA 103
PSA 928
PSA 8161
Total Graded (All Grades)1,598

* Population data as of Oct. 30, 2026. PSA population counts are dynamic and increase as more cards are submitted for grading.

The copy pictured here is a PSA GEM MT 10, cert 08169518, one of the three. Together, the 10s and 9s come to 31 straight-graded copies, about one in 52.

The full straight-grade curve sits low and wide. The peak is PSA 6, with PSA 4 and PSA 5 not far behind:

  • PSA 10: 3
  • PSA 9: 28
  • PSA 8: 161
  • PSA 7: 247
  • PSA 6: 336
  • PSA 5: 261
  • PSA 4: 279
  • PSA 3: 133
  • PSA 2: 90
  • PSA 1: 42
  • Authentic: 18

At the top of the curve, the qualifiers tell the better story. On top of those straight grades, PSA has given 343 copies a qualified grade, a number grade with one specific flaw noted on the label. Of those, 118 are qualified 8s and 44 are qualified 9s, so more copies reached the 9 level with a qualifier than without one. PSA also lists 148 half grades, which takes the card to 2,089 slabs in all.

Verdict: this is the first card of the man on the logo, and it lists him at the wrong position. Most graded copies live between PSA 4 and PSA 7, a clean 9 is rarer than a flawed one, and just three have come back perfect.