1969 O-Pee-Chee #138 Tony Esposito RC: 299 Copies Land at PSA 8, and the Grade Above It Holds 93
Tony Esposito's rookie card carries 1,072 straight-graded copies at PSA, and the population climbs at every single grade from the 1 to the 8 — then gives back 206 copies at the nine.
The card is #138 in the 1969 O-Pee-Chee hockey set, the issue that covers Esposito's rookie season. PSA's own record for it carries both the rookie designation and the Hall of Fame mark.
Esposito was 26 when he finally got a net to himself. He had spent the previous season as a spare part in Montreal, and the Canadiens — deep enough in goal with Gump Worsley, Rogie Vachon and prospects behind them — left him unprotected in 1969. Chicago claimed him on waivers ahead of the 1969-70 season, in what was then called an intra-league draft. He had already been a member of Montreal's 1969 Stanley Cup team, with his name engraved on the Cup, before he ever played a game for the Black Hawks.
What he did with the chance is why the card is collected. Esposito posted a 2.17 goals-against average and recorded 15 shutouts, still the modern NHL record for the league since 1942, and in that same season he took the Calder Trophy as its best rookie and the Vezina Trophy, then awarded to the goaltenders of the team that allowed the fewest goals. He won the Vezina three times in all, was named to the First All-Star Team three times and the Second Team twice, and was one of Canada's two goaltenders in the 1972 Summit Series. Chicago retired his number 35 in 1988, the year he entered the Hockey Hall of Fame — where his older brother Phil, a centre, also sits. Esposito was one of the goaltenders who brought the butterfly style into the NHL mainstream. He died in 2021 at 78.
PSA's population report for the card, pulled today, reads:
PSA Population Report
| PSA Grade | Population |
|---|---|
| PSA 10 | 2 |
| PSA 9 | 93 |
| PSA 8 | 299 |
| Total Graded (All Grades) | 1,072 |
* Population data as of October 7, 2026. PSA population counts are dynamic and increase as more cards are submitted for grading.
Two Gem Mint 10s against 93 nines and 299 eights is a gem rate of 0.19%. The more telling number is the shape of the curve underneath those three rows.
Walk the straight grades from the bottom and the count rises at every step. Thirteen copies sit at PSA 1, 22 at 2, 43 at 3, 98 at 4, 112 at 5, 166 at 6, 220 at 7, and 299 at 8 — eight consecutive grades, each one holding more copies than the grade below it. Then the nine lands with 93, and the ten with two.
The largest gain anywhere in that climb is the 79 copies added at the 8. The largest drop comes immediately after it: 206 copies, from 299 down to 93, the biggest single step anywhere in the population. The card's steepest rise and its steepest fall are one grade apart, and every row above the 8 is a fraction of the row beneath it.
Those 1,072 copies are straight grades, and they include four examples PSA encapsulates as Authentic rather than with a number — 1,068 numerically graded plus those four. Two further layers sit outside the total entirely. Half grades account for 36 slabs, spread from 1.5 up to 8.5. Qualified copies — examples PSA holders with a notation marking a flaw such as off-centering or a miscut, rather than a straight grade — account for 35 more, and they are weighted toward the top of the scale: 14 qualified nines and 10 qualified eights, plus five sevens, two sixes, and one copy each at the 1, 2, 4 and 5 grades. Every one of them sits beside the straight population, not inside it. Add the three layers together and the card accounts for 1,143 graded slabs.
The scan PSA publishes for the card is a graded example rather than a raw one, and its label reads 1969 O-Pee-Chee #138, Tony Esposito, MINT 9, cert 12357912 — one of the 93 nines. The card front shows Esposito in Chicago's red sweater with the number 35 on his sleeve, wearing the pads and blocker of a working goaltender, the Black Hawks' head logo at the upper right, a hockey stick running down the right edge of the frame, and a blue GOALIE roundel at the foot of the design beside his name and his team's.
Eight straight grades of growth, a peak of 299 copies at the 8, and just 93 and 2 above it — Tony Esposito's rookie card is not short of graded copies. It is short of ones that survived the top of the scale.
