2002 Topps Spider-Man #3: Nine PSA 9s Against Five PSA 8s, and Two Gem Mints on Top
PSA's population report for the 2002 Topps Spider-Man card of Spider-Man himself lists nine Mint 9s, five NM-MT 8s and two Gem Mint 10s — a population with more copies at the nine than at the eight.
The card is #3 in Topps' 100-card 2002 Spider-Man issue, and it is the one that carries the title character. Its front is Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man in the red suit, photographed against a white web field, with the film's "SPIDER-MAN" wordmark set in a black band across the foot of the card. The Trading Card Database links #3 to Maguire and to the character, and catalogues the set at 100 cards.
The set dates from 2002, the year Sam Raimi's Spider-Man reached American theatres on May 3 — the film that opened Raimi's trilogy and put Maguire in the suit, and the most successful comic-book film of its time. Topps issued the 100-card set in that same year, and its checklist is drawn from the film: the Trading Card Database ties its cards to Raimi's cast and to the characters they play.
PSA's population report for the card reads:
PSA Population Report
| PSA Grade | Population |
|---|---|
| PSA 10 | 2 |
| PSA 9 | 9 |
| PSA 8 | 5 |
* Population data as of October 9, 2026. PSA population counts are dynamic and increase as more cards are submitted for grading.
The middle row is the largest. Nine copies hold a Mint 9 and only five sit at NM-MT 8, so PSA has certified nearly twice as many nines of this card as eights.
The second thing the table shows is how small the top end is. Add the three rows and the card has 16 slabs at PSA 8 or better, two of them gem mint. That total is not a measure of how many of these cards were made — it is a measure of how many were sent in.
Nine nines against five eights suggests that the copies sent in were mostly well kept: no long tail of worn examples sits underneath the top grades. What is left is a card that is difficult at the very top, where two Gem Mint 10s make up the entire population, and ordinary one grade down.
For a collector, those two Gem Mint 10s are the whole story: the title character of the 2002 film in PSA's best grade means one of two slabs. The nine Mint 9s and five NM-MT 8s are the practical way in, and the rarity that matters here is not the card — it is the top of its population.
