Card of the Day: 1962 Topps #90 Fran Tarkenton RC — Zero PSA 10s in 1,820 Graded

Forty-seven thousand passing yards. Three hundred and forty-two touchdowns. And zero PSA 10s.

The 1962 Topps #90 Fran Tarkenton rookie is the only recognized rookie card of a quarterback who retired holding nearly every major passing record in NFL history. PSA has graded 1,820 of them. Not one has come back Gem Mint.

The Card

The 1962 Topps football set is one of the most condition-hostile designs the company ever printed. The cards are horizontal, built around a black border framing a color portrait on the right and a black-and-white action shot on the left, with the player's name, team, and position stacked in a colored nameplate below. Tarkenton's reads FRAN TARKENTON / MINN. VIKINGS / QUARTERBACK.

That black border is the whole story. On a black-bordered card, every corner tap, every edge nick, and every shift in the cutting process announces itself in white. There is nowhere for wear to hide. Sixty-four years later, the design is doing exactly what it did in 1962 — punishing anyone who handled the card.

PSA classifies the card as a short print, listing it in the Price Guide as "Fran Tarkenton (R) (HOF) SP." Per PSA CardFacts, the Tarkenton is an elusive short print with errors, and it is the most submitted card from the entire set — which tells you everything about the gap between how many people want one and how many good ones exist.

The Player

Tarkenton threw four touchdown passes in his very first NFL game, in 1961. He never really slowed down. By the time he retired he had accumulated 6,467 attempts, 3,686 completions, 47,003 passing yards, and 342 touchdowns — all records at the time he walked away.

He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1986 and the College Football Hall of Fame in 1987. He did all of it as a scrambler in an era that regarded leaving the pocket as a character flaw.

PSA Population Report

* Population data as of July 27, 2026. PSA population counts are dynamic and increase as more cards are submitted for grading.

The example pictured at the top of this article is one of those six: a PSA MINT 9, certification #04139415, from PSA's own CardFacts listing for the card.

Reading the Curve

Population reports usually tell a story in their shape, and this one is blunt. The 1962 Tarkenton clusters hard in the middle of the scale and then falls off a cliff:

• PSA 4: 427 copies — the single most common grade
• PSA 6: 382 copies
• PSA 5: 372 copies
• PSA 7: 231 copies
• PSA 8: 72 copies
• PSA 9: 6 copies
• PSA 10: none

Those three middle grades — 4, 5, and 6 — account for 1,181 cards, roughly 65% of everything PSA has ever graded. Straight grades of PSA 8 or better total just 78 copies out of 1,820. That's 4.3%.

The wall sits between 7 and 8. Getting to Near Mint is achievable; 231 people have done it. Getting past it is close to a coin flip against the black border, and only six submissions in the card's entire graded history have cleared PSA 8.

What the Market Pays for That Wall

The PSA Price Guide tracks the population curve almost exactly:

• EX 5 — $340
• EX-MT 6 — $425
• NM 7 — $1,275
• NM+ 7.5 — $2,000
• NM-MT 8 — $5,000
• NM-MT+ 8.5 — $7,500
• MT 9 — $12,500

Note where the money turns on. A PSA 6 to a PSA 7 is a 3x move. A PSA 7 to a PSA 8 is nearly 4x again. From a $425 mid-grade copy to a $12,500 Mint 9 is a 29x spread on the same piece of cardboard — the entire difference being how carefully someone treated it during the Kennedy administration.

The EX 5 at $340 is the honest entry point here, and it's a genuinely reasonable number for a Hall of Fame quarterback's only rookie card. Most collectors chasing this card should be shopping the 4-to-6 range, where two-thirds of the supply actually lives.

The Company It Keeps

We covered the 1958 Topps Jim Brown rookie back in Case #0065, and the pop reports are near twins: zero PSA 10s, exactly six PSA 9s. Brown's card has 199 PSA 8s across 5,160 total submissions. Tarkenton's has 72 across 1,820.

Run the ratios and Tarkenton is the tougher card at the top. Brown converts 3.9% of submissions into a straight PSA 8 or better; Tarkenton manages 4.3% — close enough to call even — but does it from a submission pool barely a third the size. There are simply fewer high-grade Tarkentons in existence, and both cards share the same ceiling: nobody has ever found a perfect one.

The Verdict

The 1962 Topps Fran Tarkenton is a blue-chip vintage football rookie whose population report has never produced a Gem Mint copy in 1,820 tries. It's a short print, on a black-bordered design, of a Hall of Famer who held the passing record book when he retired. The PSA 9s are effectively unbuyable — six exist. The realistic play is a solid mid-grade example at a few hundred dollars, with the knowledge that anything grading PSA 8 or above puts you in a club of 78 cards worldwide.