1966 Topps Batman #1 The Batman — the Most-Submitted Card in the Set, and It Has Never Graded a 10
Card No. 1 of the 1966 Topps Batman Black Bat set is the most-submitted card in it, and PSA has never graded one a 10. Not once in 2,085 holders. The set around it has produced 71 PSA 10s across its other cards. The card everybody sent in has none.
PSA Population Report
| PSA Grade | Population |
|---|---|
| PSA 10 | 0 |
| PSA 9 | 13 |
| PSA 8 | 66 |
| Total Graded (All Grades) | 1,741 |
* Population data as of September 9, 2026. PSA population counts are dynamic and increase as more cards are submitted for grading.
That 1,741 is straight grades only, and it includes four copies that came back Authentic with no numeric grade at all. On top of it sit 207 half-grades and 137 qualified holders, for 2,085 slabs in total.
The Curve Is the Whole Story
A four-row table hides what this card actually does. The full distribution peaks nowhere near the top:
- PSA 10 — 0
- PSA 9 — 13
- PSA 8 — 66
- PSA 7 — 126
- PSA 6 — 197
- PSA 5 — 202
- PSA 4 — 343, the single most common grade
- PSA 3 — 313
- PSA 2 — 278
- PSA 1 — 199
- Authentic, no numeric grade — 4
Grades 1 through 4 account for 1,133 of the 1,741 straight-graded copies — roughly two in three. Only 79 copies have ever graded 8 or better, which is 4.5 percent of everything PSA has numerically graded. Exactly one PSA 8.5 exists.
Most of the Nines Are Not Clean Nines
Thirteen copies have graded a straight PSA 9. Another 21 have graded a 9 with a qualifier — so of the 34 cards that have reached nine in any form, more than half carry an asterisk. The pattern repeats one grade down, where 20 qualified 8s sit beside the 66 clean ones.
PSA's own reference scan for the card is one of the qualified ones. The slab in the CardFacts image reads MINT 9(OC), cert 16386200 — off-center, and the highest-graded example the population report puts in front of you is a card that missed on centering rather than on wear.
Analysis: that is what a 1960s Topps non-sport card fails on. The design gives it nowhere to hide — Batman is dropped on a flat red field with a thin white border on all four sides, and the black bat-shaped nameplate carrying the words THE BATMAN sits in the bottom right corner, which is precisely where a cut running long shows up. A card can survive sixty years without a crease and still never see a 10.
Everyone Sent In Card No. 1
TCDB lists the Black Bat set at 55 cards, issued in a single series and identified by the black bat logo on the front. Pulling PSA's population report for all 55 puts the submission volume in context. The set has 23,352 holders in total, and the median card accounts for 369 of them. Card No. 1 accounts for 2,085 — 8.9 percent of the entire set's population, sitting on 1.8 percent of its cards. The next-most-graded card, No. 2 "Robin - Boy Wonder," has 1,062. Nothing else is close.
And the submissions did not produce quality. Compare it to No. 36, "The Riddler," which has roughly a third of the volume at 719 holders:
- The Batman (No. 1) — 2,085 holders, 0 PSA 10s, 13 clean 9s, 66 PSA 8s
- The Riddler (No. 36) — 719 holders, 8 PSA 10s, 45 clean 9s, 118 PSA 8s
The Riddler has been graded a nine three and a half times as often as the Batman on a third of the submissions, and it has eight tens to the Batman's none. Eighteen of the 55 cards have no PSA 10 at all, so a goose egg is not rare here — but it is rare on the card that has been submitted more than any other.
Analysis: the volume is the reason, not a coincidence. Card No. 1 is the card people pull out of a shoebox, the card at the front of a stack, and the one most likely to have been handled, thumbed and pocketed since 1966. The cards nobody cared about got put away and stayed there.
A Second 55-Card Topps Non-Sport Set, Five Days Apart
This blog ran 1962 Topps Mars Attacks No. 1 as CASE #0306 on September 4 — also card No. 1, also a 55-card Topps non-sport set, also with zero PSA 10s of its own. That sweep found exactly one PSA 10 across the 22,294 copies PSA has graded from the set.
The Black Bat set is comparable in size — 20,383 straight grades, or 23,352 slabs once half-grades and qualifiers are counted — and it has produced 71. Two Topps non-sport sets from the same decade, the same 55-card format and the same card position, and the top of the scale is seventy times deeper in one than the other.
The Verdict
Misdemeanor. The 1966 Topps Batman Black Bat No. 1 is not a rare card — 2,085 people have had one slabbed, more than any other card in its set. It is a card where the top of the population is decided by centering, where more nines carry qualifiers than don't, and where sixty years of submissions have produced a grand total of zero PSA 10s. The checklist it leads has managed 71. This one has never managed one.
