The bottom corner of 1963 Topps #82 lists Bob Lilly's position as END. That was already out of date in the year the card came out. According to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Lilly starred at defensive end as a rookie in 1961, then moved to defensive tackle in his third season, 1963, "with even more sensational results." His rookie card went to press at the position he was leaving.

The card has a second quirk, and the population report makes it the more interesting one. It is a short print, and it is also one of the most-graded cards in the set.

Mr. Cowboy

The Hall's biography does not waste words. Lilly was a consensus All-America at Texas Christian before the Dallas Cowboys made him "the franchise's first draft choice in 1961." Over the next 14 seasons, his play made him "popularly known as 'Mr. Cowboy.'"

He played in 196 consecutive regular-season games. His only career "miss," the Hall notes, was the 1973 NFC Championship Game, when a leg injury kept him out. He went to 11 Pro Bowls, and the Cowboys reached Super Bowls V and VI. In 1980 he became the first player who spent his entire career with the Cowboys to be elected to the Hall of Fame.

A Short Print That Got Graded Anyway

The Trading Card Database marks 76 of the set's 170 cards as short prints. Every Cowboys card is among them, cards 73 through 84, from Eddie LeBaron to the team card. PSA's own label data calls the Lilly an SP too.

Short prints in this set tend to be graded less often. This blog pulled PSA's population for all 170 cards on September 30, 2026. The median short print has about 105 copies on PSA's straight grading scale, and the median regular card about 145.

Lilly has 922. Among all 76 short prints, only card 14, Jim Brown, has more, at 1,114. The next short print after Lilly is his teammate Don Meredith, at 401. Lilly's rookie has been graded more than twice as often as any other Cowboy in the set.

PSA Population Report

PSA GradePopulation
PSA 100
PSA 910
PSA 892
Total Graded (All Grades)922

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

Four Cards Past 900, and No Tens at the Top

Only four cards in 1963 Topps football have crossed 900 straight grades, and Lilly is one of them. The sweep's CardFacts entries map one-to-one onto the 170 card numbers, with no variety splits. TCDB also puts the set at 170 cards.

The top of the volume table is also where the set's perfect grades are missing. The six most-graded cards:

  • Card 96, Ray Nitschke: 1,222 graded, no PSA 10
  • Card 14, Jim Brown: 1,114 graded, no PSA 10
  • Card 44, Dave Jones: 1,112 graded, no PSA 10
  • Card 82, Bob Lilly: 922 graded, no PSA 10
  • Card 1, Johnny Unitas: 790 graded, no PSA 10
  • Card 86, Bart Starr: 755 graded, no PSA 10

The first card on that list with a Gem Mint copy is seventh: Mike Ditka, card 62, with one. The whole set has 24 PSA 10s, and 148 of its 170 cards have none.

Where the Condition Runs Out

Lilly's copies cluster in the middle of the scale. His population peaks at PSA 7, with 218 copies, only five more than the 213 at PSA 6. Just 102 of the 922, about 11 percent, reached PSA 8 or better. Across the whole set that share is 32 percent.

Only five cards in the set have a lower share of 8-or-better copies than Lilly's: Unitas, Ed Brown, Jim Brown, Starr and Nitschke. Put Lilly back in and the overlap is hard to miss: five of the six most-graded cards in the set are also five of the six lowest by that measure. Only Dave Jones breaks the pattern.

The slab pictured here, cert 08155136, is one of the 92 PSA 8s. PSA's cert page for it confirms the grade and reports the same population of 92.

Verdict: 1963 Topps #82 Bob Lilly is a short-printed rookie that collectors have graded like one of the set's biggest names anyway: 922 copies, second among the set's 76 short prints only to Jim Brown and more than twice any other Cowboy. Like each of the six most-graded cards in the set, it has never produced a PSA 10. And the card still calls Mr. Cowboy an end.