In the colorful world of sports card collecting, where rare pulls and hefty price tags reign supreme, one card is making quiet but notable strides. It’s not the flashy rookie adorned with accolades and historical significance, but rather, the underappreciated sibling waiting its turn for the spotlight—the 1989 Fleer Michael Jordan card. Long overshadowed by the allure of the 1986 Fleer rookie card (the undisputed darling of basketball card aficionados), the 1989 edition has begun to carve out its own place in the hearts—and portfolios—of collectors who appreciate a good underdog story.
While collectors have been salivating over the upper echelon cards sporting exorbitant price tags, the 1989 Fleer Edition, bearing the number 21, has been quietly doing a bit of heavy lifting itself. Once a humble, unpretentious entry in the vast realm of basketball cards, it’s defying its modest beginnings with impressive panache. Cast your mind back to 2021, when PSA 10 versions of this card were fetching around $1,001—a respectable sum, to be sure, but hardly the kind of figure to make Wall Street go weak at the knees. Fast-forward to June 2025, however, and these same gems are now commanding $1,200. That’s a solid 20% appreciation, a testament to incremental but steady growth.
You might not be pinching yourself yet at an increase of $199, but consider this: in the funeral-palace that has become of certain speculative markets, sometimes “slow and steady wins the race” is the mantra worth chanting.
According to PSA (the grading gods), there are about 1,240 PSA 10s and a staggering 11,000 PSA 9s floating in circulation. It may seem like a hefty number, yet the demand for these cards hasn’t waned. Curiously, collectors seem to have shifted gears; where once the delineating factor was price (or the lack of decimal places thereat), today it’s the principle of possessing a piece of Michael Jordan nostalgia without levying against one’s own castle. Simply put, not every Jordan card needs a van Gogh price tag.
Throw into this mix the seismic surge in the price of raw copies—a lowly, unspectacular entity on the surface. Back in 2022, you could walk away with a raw Fleer Jordan for the paltry sum of six bucks. The present day asks you to part with twenty crisp bills to secure the same card—more than triple the original outlay. Neither rare promo nor dazzling insert accounts for this surge; the value lies in its simplicity—a base-era Jordan, loved and cherished, yet so often ignored.
So what is igniting this newfound fire among collectors? Well, a perfect storm, perhaps. With grading fees rising faster than fuel prices, collectors pivot towards cards already encased in that prestigious plastic slab. Throw in the nostalgia bomb for late ’80s basketball and the timeless appeal of owning a Jordan card—without collateral damage to one’s finances—and the picture starts to clarify.
In its essence, the 1989 Fleer doesn’t cry out for attention. It isn’t about bombast or bling. Gone are the theatrics of dunking over Ewing or a majestic gold foil embellishment. Instead, it offers something far more subtle and, dare we say, mature: it’s a snapshot of MJ in his element, encapsulated during the halcyon heyday of Bulls mania. As a steadily climbing new darling of those in-the-know, it’s fast becoming the thinking collector’s card of choice.
If you’re a discerning enthusiast with a keen eye for value and long-term appreciation—perhaps jaded by the usual suspects glittering like sirens—the 1989 Fleer card offers a refreshing diversion. Michael Jordan didn’t need a rookie stamp to dominate the court, and his 1989 card doesn’t need the blaring spotlight or a glamorous pedigree to deliver quiet yet impressive gains.