Possibly the best 1961 Fleer Wilt Chamberlain rookie card in existence received an SGC 10 grade recently, the first ever given to the card in the company’s history.
The grade was announced by SGC president Peter Steinberg on Friday morning in a video posted on SGC’s social channels.
The card first came across SGC’s radar when a photo was shared by DK's Sports Cards, a card shop in Crosby, Minnesota, on Aug. 5. According to the post, the Chamberlain rookie was brought in by a customer after finding a number of cards in a closet of a grocery store once owned by the customer's parents.
A new hobby treasure has been found! pic.twitter.com/Rm0HcHDak8
— SGC (@sgcgrading) August 23, 2024
“Just pound-for-pound, I feel very comfortable saying this is the best Wilt rookie on the planet,” Steinberg told cllct. “There’s no room for improvement. If you asked me what could make it even better, I don’t have that answer.”
The Chamberlain is the highest graded by SGC, with no SGC 10 Pristine examples in existence. The next highest in SGC’s census is an SGC 9, with six total copies. It’s also the only 10 in SGC’s entire population from the 1961 Fleer Basketball set.
There are three PSA 10 copies of the card in existence and 32 total PSA 9s.
Considered by many to be the most important basketball card set of all time, 1961 Fleer was plagued by production issues at release, making the set a difficult grade.
In addition to widespread centering issues, photos are often found with poor registration while the colors are commonly riddled with what SGC calls “snow,” or a number of print defects that create white specs across the card.
Gum stains are also regularly found.
“If we graded the cards, hypothetically, back in 1961 at the factory as they came off the press,” Steinberg said, “most of the cards would grade under an eight, just in the way they were manufactured.”
This Chamberlain, Steinberg says, checks all the boxes. It features rough cuts on both the left and right edges, it’s perfectly centered, and has great colors.
SGC also believes the card might have come from the same pack as other 1961 Fleer Basketball cards submitted, with each featuring “unbelievable mint-plus” quality. Though the others didn’t have perfect centering, the Chamberlain rookie did.
It’s currently unclear if the card will be kept in a private collection or consigned and sent to auction.
A PSA 10 example has never sold publicly, according to Card Ladder, while a PSA 9 example holds the record for the highest public sale after fetching $198,000 at Heritage in May.
A PSA 9 example sold for $670,000 in a private sale brokered by PWCC in 2022. That card also featured a Top 5% eye appeal designation.
The top price for an SGC 9 example is $159,483.60 at Memory Lane in 2022.
Ben Burrows is a reporter and editor for cllct.