PSA has put 918 copies of this card in holders since 1977. Nine of them are Gem Mint 10s — and the scan PSA publishes on its own CardFacts page is one of the nine, cert 18955654.

The 1977 Topps set gave card #50 to a rookie cornerback who had just intercepted eight passes and led the AFC in punt-return yardage. Mike Haynes went into Canton twenty years later. His rookie card has been graded more than nine hundred times and has come back a 10 nine times.

PSA Population Report

PSA GradePopulationValue
PSA 109$1,650
PSA 9112$125
PSA 8316$20
Total Graded (All Grades)823—

* Population data as of September 5, 2026. PSA population counts are dynamic and increase as more cards are submitted for grading.

Read the Whole Curve

The four rows above are the standard summary and they leave out the shape of this population. The 823 straight grades run the full ladder, and the mass sits high: 165 sevens and 316 eights — 481 copies, well over half the straight-graded total, in two grades. Below that the numbers thin quickly: 93 sixes, 74 fives, 39 fours, and only 17 copies in total across every grade from Authentic through PSA 3.

That is not the curve a 1977 common usually returns. Cards of this age normally peak somewhere around the 6 or 7, with a long tail of beaten copies underneath. This one peaks at the 8 and has almost no tail at all. The likeliest reading is that these copies are coming out of stored, unhandled stock rather than out of shoeboxes — that is this blog's inference from the shape, not a PSA finding.

And then it stops. Above the PSA 8, the population collapses: 112 nines and nine tens. The card grades cleanly up to a point and almost never past it.

The Qualifiers Cluster at the Top

Beyond the 823 straight grades sit 13 half-grades and 82 qualified slabs — copies PSA assigned a numeric grade and then flagged with a qualifier. Qualified grades are usually a footnote. Here they are the finding, because of where they land.

  • PSA 9: 112 straight, 48 qualified. Of the 160 copies of this card that have graded a 9, 30% carry a qualifier.
  • PSA 8: 316 straight, 28 qualified — 8.1% of the 344 copies at that grade.
  • PSA 7: 165 straight, 5 qualified. PSA 6: 93 straight, 1 qualified.

The pattern runs in one direction and it is steep. At the 6, one copy in ninety-four is flagged. At the 8, one in twelve. At the 9, nearly one in three. Whatever is wrong with these cards does not stop them reaching the top of the scale — it stops them being clean when they get there. Forty-eight collectors own a card that graded nine and still has an asterisk on the label.

Put the qualified nines beside the straight tens and the ratio is the story of the card: 48 flagged nines to nine clean tens, better than five to one.

The Player

Haynes was the New England Patriots' first selection in the 1976 draft — the fifth player taken overall and the first defensive back off the board, out of Arizona State, where he was a three-year All-WAC selection. The Hall of Fame's account of his rookie season explains the card: eight interceptions, an AFC-leading 608 yards on 45 punt returns, and the first two punt-return touchdowns in franchise history, from 89 and 62 yards. He made the Pro Bowl as a rookie, the first of nine, and opened his career with 58 consecutive starts.

He played seven seasons in New England and seven with the Los Angeles Raiders, arriving there in November 1983 through a settlement that sent the Patriots a first-round pick in 1984 and a second in 1985. He started the Raiders' Super Bowl XVIII win and intercepted a pass in it. Across fourteen seasons he took 46 interceptions for 688 return yards, including a 97-yard return against Miami in 1984 that remains a Raiders record. He was enshrined in Canton with the Class of 1997.

What the Card Is

1977 Topps gave a handful of its cards an All-Pro designation, and #50 is one of them. A blue banner across the top reads PATRIOTS, with a yellow bubble carrying the position — CB — and Haynes' name in red beneath it. A black bar under that reads 1976 AFC ALL-PRO, the season being commemorated, and below the bar is a tight sideline photograph of Haynes in a white number 40 jersey, helmet off, looking away from the camera.

It is his rookie card, marked as such by both PSA and the independent checklist, and it costs almost nothing in the grades most copies come back in. PSA's Price Guide puts the 8 at $20 and the 9 at $125. The 10 it puts at $1,650.

The Verdict

This is a card that is easy to own and nearly impossible to own perfectly. Three hundred and forty-four copies have graded an 8, and nine have graded a 10 in forty-nine years. The clean top of this population is 121 cards out of 918 — 112 straight nines and nine tens — and forty-eight more copies reached the 9 carrying a flag.