1985 Topps #401 Mark McGwire Rookie Card: Olympic Red Before Oakland, and 306 PSA 10s Among 59,716 Graded
Mark McGwire's 1985 Topps card shows him in a red USA jersey, more than a year before he played a game for Oakland. PSA has graded 59,716 copies. The most common grade is PSA 8, and 306 have reached PSA 10.
The Player
McGwire was born in Pomona, California, on Oct. 1, 1963. The Montreal Expos drafted him out of Damien High School in the eighth round in 1981, and he did not sign. He went to the University of Southern California instead, and The Sporting News named him its college player of the year in 1984.
That summer he played for the U.S. national team. He hit .359 over 35 games and made the roster for the Los Angeles Olympics, where the Americans took silver behind Japan. McGwire went 4-for-21 in the five-game tournament without a home run. Oakland had already taken him with the 10th overall pick in the 1984 draft, and he spent the rest of 1984 and all of 1985 with Single-A Modesto.
He reached the majors on Aug. 22, 1986. In 1987, still a rookie, he hit 49 home runs, a major-league rookie record that stood until Aaron Judge hit 52 in 2017, and he was the unanimous American League Rookie of the Year. He won the 1989 World Series with Oakland, was traded to St. Louis in July 1997, and in 1998 hit 70 home runs to pass Roger Maris's single-season record of 61. He retired after the 2001 season with 583.
In 2010 McGwire publicly admitted using performance-enhancing drugs during much of his career. He was on the Hall of Fame ballot from 2007 to 2016, peaked at 23.7 percent in 2010, well short of the 75 percent needed, and dropped off after his 10th year.
The Card
The design leaves no doubt about where McGwire was when Topps photographed him. A baseball-shaped USA logo sits in the top left corner beside a red banner reading "1984 United States Baseball Team." McGwire stands in a USA cap and a red USA jersey, smiling and holding a bat, with a ballpark behind him. The nameplate at the bottom reads "Mark McGwire First Base."
PSA catalogs the card as 1985 Topps #401 with the variety "1984 USA Baseball Team," and the Trading Card Database lists it as his rookie card. It came out in 1985, the year McGwire spent in Single-A with Modesto.
The copy pictured is a PSA GEM MT 10, cert 08171920.
PSA Population Report
| PSA Grade | Population |
|---|---|
| PSA 10 | 306 |
| PSA 9 | 7,408 |
| PSA 8 | 35,066 |
| Total Graded (All Grades) | 59,716 |
* Population data as of November 12, 2026. PSA population counts are dynamic and increase as more cards are submitted for grading.
Reading the Curve
The curve is built around one grade. PSA 8 alone holds 35,066 copies, nearly three in every five. PSA 7 is a distant second at 11,735, and PSA 9 third at 7,408.
Below that the numbers fall away quickly: 3,274 at PSA 6, 1,261 at PSA 5, 414 at PSA 4, and only 239 copies at PSA 3 or lower. Thirteen slabs are marked Authentic.
At the top, 7,714 copies have graded PSA 9 or better, about 13 percent of the total. PSA 10 is the narrow end of that group, with 306 copies, roughly one in every 195 graded.
The 59,716 counts straight grades only. PSA has also issued 344 half grades, 219 of them at 8.5, and 6,811 qualified grades. Most of the qualifiers sit at the top of the scale: 5,077 at PSA 8 and 1,406 at PSA 9. Counting everything, PSA has slabbed 66,871 copies of this card.
