Auction Name: 2026 February 28 - March 1 Winter Platinum Night Sports Catalog Auction

Lot Number: 80048

Shortcut to Lot: HA.com/50083*80048

1993 SP Derek Jeter Foil Rookie #279 PSA Gem Mint 10. The Rookie of the Year in 1996. Five World Championship rings. A home run for his 3,000th hit during a five-for-five performance. A walk-off single in his final Yankee Stadium game. A roster of ex-girlfriends that would make Frank Sinatra jealous. Everything just seems to fall into place when your name is Derek Jeter. Does anything ever not go The Captain's way?

Well, some card collectors might think so. While the crowded field of trading card companies in the modern game has supplied the hobby with several entries considered to be a Derek Jeter rookie, top billing is all but universally assigned to the 1993 SP. Is it a beauty? Sure. But like a tipsy supermodel on six-inch stilettos, just the tiniest stumble can ruin the effect.

It's that unusual foil coating that supplies the issue with both its pretty face and its Achilles' heel, leaving the edges so damage-prone that the slightest brush of the finger sends the grade plummeting to the middle reaches of the population report. Out of nearly 27,000 submitted to PSA at the time of this writing, just twenty-two have been assessed at the Gem Mint 10 level, a ratio just short of one-in-a-thousand. By comparison, three 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle rookies have earned top billing out of 2,080 submissions, less than one-in-700. In other words, a Gem Mint 10 grade for a Mantle rookie is considerably more common than a Gem Mint 10 grade for this Jeter rookie relative to the full population of each.

The recent surge into eight-figure territory for the 1952 Topps Mantle at auction suggests the brightest of futures for this gleaming slab of perfection from a fellow Yankee icon, and we expect fierce competition from global collectors with a similarly bullish view of market forces. Graded PSA Gem Mint 10.

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