1983 Topps #498 Wade Boggs RC: Listed at First and Third, With More Than Twice as Many PSA 8s as 9s
Wade Boggs' rookie card gives him two positions: "1st BASE-3rd BASE." He went into the Hall of Fame in 2005 as a third baseman with 3,010 hits and five batting titles. PSA has graded 19,972 copies of 1983 Topps #498 in straight grades. The curve peaks at PSA 8, which holds 9,087 of them, and 405 are 10s.
The Card
The main photo is a full-length shot of Boggs in a white Red Sox uniform and a blue batting helmet. He is bent at the waist with his hands on his knees against a soft green background. A circular inset at the lower right shows a second portrait: Boggs in a navy cap with the Red Sox "B," smiling, a bat on his shoulder.
The Topps logo sits in the upper right corner. The name box at the lower left reads "WADE BOGGS," with "1st BASE-3rd BASE" underneath, and a blue "RED SOX" banner runs along the bottom. PSA files it as his rookie card. Boggs had debuted on April 10, 1982, so the card arrived with one big-league season behind him.
The Player
Boggs was a seventh-round pick of the Red Sox in 1976, out of Plant High School in Tampa. He spent six years in the minors, and he recalled being told there that he had no power, couldn't field and was too slow. In 1981, with Pawtucket, he played in the longest game in professional baseball history, 33 innings against Rochester.
The hitting never needed explaining. Boggs batted .349 as a rookie in 1982, which would have led the league, but he was 121 plate appearances short of qualifying. From 1983 he won five American League batting titles in six years. He also strung together seven straight seasons of 200 or more hits, an American League record until Ichiro Suzuki passed it.
He left Boston for the Yankees after the 1992 season, won the World Series with them in 1996 and finished with Tampa Bay. Baseball-Reference credits him with 3,010 career hits. The Baseball Writers' Association of America elected him on 474 of 516 ballots in 2005, his first year of eligibility.
PSA Population Report
| PSA Grade | Population |
|---|---|
| PSA 10 | 405 |
| PSA 9 | 4,049 |
| PSA 8 | 9,087 |
| Total Graded (All Grades) | 19,972 |
* Population data as of November 5, 2026. PSA population counts are dynamic and increase as more cards are submitted for grading.
Reading the Curve
The full straight-grade curve:
- PSA 10: 405
- PSA 9: 4,049
- PSA 8: 9,087
- PSA 7: 3,874
- PSA 6: 1,581
- PSA 5: 589
- PSA 4: 247
- PSA 3: 89
- PSA 2: 28
- PSA 1: 10
- Authentic: 13
The PSA 8 is the center of gravity. About 45 percent of all straight-graded copies sit there, and there are more than twice as many 8s as 9s. Above the 9s, the curve thins out quickly. The 405 tens make up about 2 percent of the straight-graded total, roughly one in every 49 copies.
Off the main ladder there is more. PSA has graded 121 copies at half grades, 70 of them at 8.5, and 1,489 with a qualifier, mostly at the top: 744 qualified 8s and 691 qualified 9s. Counting every slab, PSA has graded 21,582 copies of this card.
Those qualified 9s are worth noticing. There are 691 of them, against 4,049 straight 9s: copies PSA graded a 9 and then marked with a qualifier for a specific flaw.
Verdict: A rookie card that hedged on the position and needn't have worried about the bat. With more than 21,000 slabs graded and the weight of them at PSA 8, Boggs' rookie card is plentiful in the middle grades and gets scarce quickly above them.
Pictured: PSA GEM MT 10, cert 07105481, from the Dmitri Young Collection.
