A PSA Mint 9 copy of card No. 1 from the 1966 Topps Batman set sold for $219,600 at Heritage Auctions in late October. A PSA 9 brought $131,250 last December and another brought $45,000 in July 2024. Over the same stretch, the number of straight PSA 9s has not grown at all.

The Sale

The card, "The Batman," drew a $180,000 winning bid in Heritage's Oct. 23–25 Fall Sports Catalog Auction, CollectiblesNews.com reported. Heritage's 22% buyer's premium took the total to $219,600, above the house's pre-auction guide of $200,000 and up. The New York Post, carrying a SWNS report on Nov. 2, said the bidding finished on Oct. 23 at Heritage's headquarters in Dallas after a short bidding war. The card was Lot 81339.

CollectiblesNews calls the result a new public auction record for the card. It gives the two earlier marks: a PSA 9 that Heritage sold for $131,250 in December 2025, and a PSA 9 that sold for $45,000 in July 2024. By the outlet's count, the December record rose $88,350 in less than a year.

Analysis: On those three sales, the top public price for this card is up nearly fivefold in a little more than two years ($219,600 is 4.9 times $45,000). That is this blog's arithmetic. Three sales are three data points, not a trend line.

The Card

The Batman leads Topps' original 55-card set from 1966, the series collectors call the Black Bat for the bat-shaped logo that sets it apart from the Red Bat and Blue Bat sets that followed. It was issued during the surge around the ABC television series starring Adam West and Burt Ward. Each card carries a painted scene on the front and a piece of a continuing story on its orange back. Heritage credits the artwork to Norman Saunders and the comic artist Bob Powell.

Collectors often call card No. 1 Batman's "rookie card," a borrowed sports term the auction coverage leans on. The front shows Batman in action against a red background, with the Bat-Signal above him. The featured image above is Heritage's photograph of a 1966 Topps Batman No. 1 in a PSA holder.

Thirteen Nines, Still

Heritage said that when it cataloged the lot, PSA had graded 13 copies a Mint 9 and none a Gem Mint 10. PSA's own CardFacts population report, pulled Nov. 3, 2026, gives the same two numbers.

PSA GradePopulation
PSA 100
PSA 913
PSA 866
Total Graded (All Grades)1,835

* Population data as of Nov. 3, 2026. PSA population counts are dynamic and increase as more cards are submitted for grading.

Another 21 copies have graded a 9 with a qualifier, PSA's notation for a specific flaw such as off-centering, and those sit outside the 13. Counting half grades and qualified holders, PSA has slabbed 2,209 copies of the card.

This blog ran the card as CASE #0315 on Sept. 9. That day's pull showed the same 13 straight 9s, the same 66 straight 8s, 1,741 straight grades and 2,085 slabs in all. In the eight weeks since, PSA has added 124 slabs, and none of them is a straight 9 or an 8.

Heritage pointed to the reasons high grades are scarce after 60 years: centering, corner wear, print quality and the vulnerability of the card's colored borders.

Analysis: Bidders at the top of this card are buying from a pool that grading has not been adding to. More copies keep arriving at PSA, and they keep landing below 8. That fits a price climbing at the 9 while the count stays put. The data cannot say whether demand, the scarcity or both drove these three results, or whether the next 9 to reach auction will bring more.

Same Auction, Other End

The same Heritage auction sold a restored T206 Honus Wagner, graded PSA Authentic (Restored), for $1,982,500, according to CollectiblesNews.

Verdict: $219,600 for a PSA 9 Batman No. 1 is the card's public auction high, and it nearly quintupled the July 2024 price. The 13 copies at the top have stayed 13 while everything below them grew. Until a 14th straight 9 or a first 10 appears, every sale of this card at the top comes from the same small group.

Confidence note: The sale price, hammer, buyer's premium, guide, lot number, the December 2025 and July 2024 sales, Heritage's population statement and its artwork credits come from CollectiblesNews.com (Sam Black, Oct. 24, 2026). The Oct. 23 bidding in Dallas comes from the New York Post's SWNS report (Nov. 2, 2026). Current population figures come from PSA's CardFacts report, pulled Nov. 3, 2026, and the Sept. 9 figures from this blog's CASE #0315. The featured image is Heritage Auctions' photograph, as published by CollectiblesNews. Passages marked Analysis are this blog's interpretation, not findings in the sources.