Today, of course, the 1984 Topps Elway card is the cream of the crop that storied set has to offer, and one of the most desired cards of the entire 1980s. But, for a long time, the Elway RC languished behind other rookies in the set and seemed like it might never fulfill its potential.

Sort of like the man himself.

Indeed, while Dan Marino and Eric Dickerson streaked across the football firmament from their first snap in the NFL, Elway couldn’t seem to get out of his own way.

After a Draft-day stink in 1983 that included thumbing his nose at the Baltimore Colts — who took him Number 1 overall — and threatening to play baseball for the New York Yankees rather than take heave the rock on the gridiron, Elway got his wish … a trade to the Denver Broncos.

His debut that fall produced a 4-6 quarterback record as the Broncos squeaked into the playoffs.

Meanwhile, Dickerson led the NFL in rushing as a rookie and Marino threw for 2200+ yards and 20 touchdowns in just over half a season.

The football world was stoked to see what these two young phenoms had in store for 1984, and us collectors couldn’t wait to get our hands on their rookie cards.

That second season saw Marino and Dickerson continue their dizzying ascent, setting records left and right, as their rookie cards threatened to turn football into a more legitimate outlet for collector dollars than it ever had been before. It didn’t hurt that Marino got the Dolphins all the way to the Super Bowl, where they fell to Joe Montana and the San Francisco 49ers.

Meanwhile, Elway led the Broncos to a 13-3 record, but they fell to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the divisional round.

And that’s sort of the way it went for Elway and Denver the next few years: big regular-season records and even three Super Bowl appearances, but no rings to show for it.

Right or wrong, Elway developed a reputation as a star quarterback who couldn’t produce when it really mattered.

And, so, his rookie card languished behind its classmates, and then behind other juggernaut football RCs like Montana’s, Jerry Rice‘s, Reggie White‘s, Jim Kelly‘s, and other.

It all took a dramatic turn in 1997, though, when Old Man Elway, at 37, got the Broncs back to the Super Bowl and then sealed the deal himself with a goal-line push for the ages. Denver beat Bretty Favre and the Green Bay Packers, 31-24, and Elway had his championship.

Suddenly, the 1984 Topps John Elway rookie card was the darling of the hobby … and then The Duke of Denver and his teammates did it all again, winning another Super Bowl to send Elway off into retirement in style.

Elway sailed into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton five years later, and his RC never looked back.

But the funny thing about that now-storied John Elway rookie card is that it’s not alone.

While it’s true that RCs of the Broncos legend can’t fill your albums like Dan Marino rookie cards can, you still have a couple of options in chasing first-year Elway cardboard.

Here, then, is the complete — if short — rundown of John Elway rookie cards.

(Note: The following sections contain affiliate links to eBay and Amazon listings for the cards being discussed. Sales prices culled from the PSA Auction Prices Realized tool for the condition in question.)

1984 Topps John Elway Rookie Card (#63)

Of course, this is the John Elway rookie card, the one that has landed at the top of the 1984 Topps football heap after all these years.

In a way, this is what you might have expected to happen back in 1983 if you were a football card prognosticator — the first card of the top pick in one of the most hyped drafts ever leading the pack after a Hall of Fame career.

That’s exactly what we have, even if it took some soap-opera-level twists and turns to get there.

Today, the PSA Population Report tells us that this card, and most others in the set, turns up in PSA 8 condition more than any other. Elway checks in at a virtual tie with Marino in sales numbers, with each of their RCs commanding $95-100 for copies in that condition.

Bump that up to PSA 9, though, and Elway jumps out front ($400+ to about $350). Move up to a “perfect” 10, and you’re looking at mid-four-figures for either guy (as well as Walter Payton).

Value: $95-100 (PSA 8).

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1984 Topps Stickers John Elway (#179)

At the same time we were pulling Elway, Marino, and Dickerson rookie cards (not to mention Curt Warner RCs) from our wax packs, collectors could also have availed ourselves of those little paper packages stuffed with football stickers.

Among the 282-piece set, this mud-smeared Elway “rookie sticker” was nestled in at #179, right between Steve Watson and Mike Pruitt.

As easy as it was to tear these things, and as tempting as it was to stick them to something, including the pages of the accompanying album, it’s sort of amazing that PSA has graded more of these as a “9” than any other condition.

Still, there aren’t all that many out there on the market, which explains the hefty sales prices.

Value: $90-100 (PSA 9)

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1984 7-Eleven Discs John Elway West (#XVII)

If you found yourself on the west coast during the fall of 1984, you might have had the opportunity to take a break from your travels or the daily grind with a quick stop in to the local 7-Eleven.

And, if you had made such a stop, you would have had the chance to slake your thirst with a refreshing Slurpee.

And, had you so imbibed, you would have entered yourself into the John Elway Rookie Football Disc Sweepstakes, wherein the Broncos’s signal-caller appeared on a certain number of cup bottoms.

Today, this magic-motion concoction shows up most often at PSA’s doors in more or less perfect condition, though a decent proportion end up with a grad of PSA 9, too — and a value about $100 less than the PSA 10 numbers shown below.

Either way, there aren’t too many of these John Elway rookie cards discs on the market at any given time.

Value: $150-200 (PSA 10)

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Maybe even less.

Don’t believe me? Well, I don’t have much in the way of proof other than this story from a card show I attended in about 1984 …

Back in those days, Horner was still young and still basking in the glory of his early home run barrages, and the hobby was really starting to cook.

Well, the baseball end of the hobby was, at any rate. Football, basketball, and hockey, not so much.

So, anyway, at this particular show at our local big-city convention center, there were plenty of Horner rookie cards up for sale, all of them in thick plastic holders and all of them under the glass of dealer showcases.

The going rate started at $3 and ranged upward to $5 and maybe even a bit beyond.

Meanwhile, over in a corner of the showroom, one hapless dealer had decided to devote about half of his space to *gasp* football cards.

They were all pretty dirt-cheap when compared to their baseball brethren, but one hunk of gridiron cardboard really stood out to me: a complete set of 1976 Topps football cards, complete with a Walter Payton rookie card in a semirigid holder, the only card afforded such royal treatment.

The asking price for the set? Ten bucks.

For the whole thing.

And, at least in my memory, the Payton was in really nice shape.

And, that was the asking price. If there’s one thing I learned from a decade of wandering card shows like a lost puppy, it’s that $5 of real, live cash in the sweaty little palm of a rabid young collector is usually enough to buy a “ten dollar” card.

But …

I didn’t buy that Payton and his set-mates. Luckily, I didn’t buy a Horner RC, either. More than likely, I plunked down my pennies to add another Pete Rose or Mike Schmidt to my collection.

Totally worth it, of course, but I really do wish I had the Sweetness card now.

Because now, well, a Walter Payton rookie card is something that commands the sort of price you might expect from the greatest running back to ever don the shoulder pads (right, Jim Brown, Barry Sanders, Curtis Dickey … but I’m a 1980s Bears homer and always will be).

And you know what’s really great about that 1976 Topps Walter Payton card that you covet (or that I covet, at least)?

It’s not the only Walter Payton rookie card out there!

Say what?

It’s true.

Once again, I sense your disbelief, so let’s get into the meat of this thing, finally.

What follows, then, is the complete rundown of Walter Payton rookie cards, along with approximate values, per actual recent sales as of September 2022.

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1976 Coke Bears Discs Walter Payton Rookie Card

In the mid-1970s, the still-fledgling hobby suddenly became awash in little paper-cardboard “discs” featuring baseball players and, to a lesser extent, players from other sports.

Isaly discs, Crane discs, Burger Chef discs, Carousel (snack bar) discs … it seemed like every food product was fair game.

And all of these little circles of sports-card fun looked pretty much the same — black-and-white player image fading into a white background at the margins, colorful enclosing circular border around the edge of the disc, player information in typeface around the player’s head, company name up top, and additional company advertising on the back of the disc.

The more of these discs you saw, the more apparent it became, too, that the players weren’t sporting any team logos on their hats or helmets (if they were wearing any).

So, what gave?

Well, what gave was that a company called Michael Schechter Associates, or MSA, landed contracts with a slew of food companies of all ilk to produce baseball cards (or discs, as the case may have been) to be included as premiums with and/or advertising for the various foodstuffs being offered up.

In order to include player likenesses, MSA also had to land contracts with each sport’s players’ union, and you’ll see those union logos on the disc fronts, too.

What you generally won’t see, though, is the actual league logo, meaning MSA likely did not have permission to use team logos — hence the hatless heads and airbrushed caps.

So … what does all of this have to do with Walter Payton rookie cards?

Well, as luck would have it, MSA produced a 22-disc set featuring members of the Chicago Bears for Coca-Cola in 1976, just in time to sweep in a certain young running back.

In this case, each disc was attached to a small ring made of the same thin carboard, which would hang from the neck of a 16-ounce glass Coke bottle in the old eight-pack cartons that used to swallow an entire grocery-store aisle.

The disc could be separated from the tab by tearing them apart along a perforated arc.

One curious bit here, at least as it relates to MSA issues, is that these Chicago discs do flash the Bears logo. So, either MSA ponied up for an NFL license in this case, made some side deal with the Bears somehow, or just flouted the rules and asked for forgiveness (or not) later.

Whatever the case, you don’t see a lot of these Walter Payton “rookie discs” on the market these days, and the version with the tab is somewhat more scarce than the disc alone.

The ones that do come up for sale, though, tend to be in pretty good condition: expect to pay $700 or more for a “tabbed” version in PSA 9 and closer to $900 for a “perfect 10.”

Without the tabs, the prices drop a bit: most recent sales have been for PSA 10 copies in the $600-700 range.

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1976 Crane Discs Walter Payton Rookie Card

So, if this Crane disc looks somewhat familiar, maybe it’s because you washed your potato chips down with a bottle of Coke back in 1976.

And maybe you snagged a Walter Payton rookie disc from both product purchases.

And, also maybe … maybe you noticed that the two discs featured the same exact photo of the Sprouting Sweetness.

Or, the other option is that you just read that section about the Coke Payton disc there in the section up above this one and were able to maintain the mental image for more than a few seconds.

Either way, you’re right — these discs are exactly the same, modulo the color band, the company name, the rightly missing Bears logo on the Crane version, and the with-tab option the Coke version offers.

And then there’s this — these Cranes were pretty much everywhere. So you can expect lower prices: somewhere from $50-150 for a PSA 9 and more like $250-300 for a PSA 10.

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1976 Saga Discs Walter Payton Rookie Card

The Saga discs, on the other hand, were not everywhere. In fact, they were hardly anywhere … or at least they’re hardly anywhere today.

In fact, the backs of these things say “Saga Philadelphia School District,” so you can pretty much narrow down where you might have found them back in the Bicentennial year.

Like the other discs, the Sagas pretty much only come on the market in top shape, with all four sold from 2018 through the fall of 2021 showing up in PSA 10. That last disc sold for a heavy $1500.

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1976 Topps Walter Payton Rookie Card (#148)

Now, with all those appetizers under our belts, we arrive at the main course of Walter Payton rookie cards, the one you came here expecting to read about in the first place.

Payton himself was a big name in the sport before his first pro touch. After all, he was a high-profile first-round pick (4th overall) in the 1975 NFL Draft, and he managed a respectable 679 yards and seven touchdowns for the Chicago Bears in his first season.

All that was reflected on that back of his RC the next year …

Then, while that 1976 Topps rookie card was still fresh, still popping out of live wax packs, Payton popped his first 1000-yard season. That fall, he rushed for 1390 ticks and scored 13 TDs before really going off in 1977 — an NFL-leading 1852 rushing yards and 14 touchdowns, which landed him the NFL MVP award.

Unbelievably, it would be the only time Sweetness led the league in rushing yardage, though he did pace the NFL in total yards in both 1977 and 1978.

Statistical league leader or not, Payton was a bona fide superstar by the end of his third season, and it didn’t take long for folks to start talking about him as an all-time great.

The man more than held up his end of the bargain, clicking off All-Pro and Pro Bowl honors like seconds on a game clock leading up to the two-minute warning. The only thing really holding back Payton’s legacy was a generally moribund Bears team that made the playoffs just twice in his first nine seasons.

But, just months after Payton broke Jim Brown’s all-time record for career rushing yards the Bears were finally clicking, making it all the way to the NFC Championship game before falling to the San Francisco 49ers. The next year, of course, the Bears put together one of the most dominant seasons in NFL history.

By the, Payton’s legacy in the game had long been cemented, though 1551 yards rushing and a second-place MVP finish didn’t hurt any.

For as great as Payton was in the 1970s and 1980s, though, and for as much as the football world (rightly) idolized him, none of that did a whole lot for the profile of Sweetness football cards.

It wasn’t just Payton, either — the gridiron hobby lagged far, far behind baseball for decades in terms of overall popularity and card prices, and even a general collecting boom couldn’t fix that overnight.

What did start to move the needle for football, though, was the high-profile budding of Joe Montana’s legend with the San Francisco 49ers and then the amazing rookie class of 1983, which led to the amazing rookie-card class of 1984: Dan Marino, John Elway, Eric Dickerson.

Payton was the pre-eminent active NFL legend as the hobby began to percolate, and we all scrambled to bring his “old” cards into the limelight. His 1976 Topps RC became a familiar and iconic sight as the 1980s gave way to the 1990s, and prices began to creep upwards.

You’d have been hard-pressed to buy a 1976 Topps football set in nice condition for ten bucks by 1990, in other words.

But out of the limelight after his retirement following the 1987 season, Payton’s cards didn’t receive any direct boosts from his play on the field (there was none) and only a mild perturbation with his election to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton in 1993.

Mostly, the continued value increases for Payton’s RC have ridden the overall rising tide of the football card market in the ensuing decades.

You can clearly see this trend by looking at actual sales prices for this classic card over the last few years: heading into the pandemic, PSA 8 copies of the Payton RC were selling for around $400 a pop. By the time the Super Bowl was played in February of 2021, it was topping $2000.

By September of 2022, the card had settled into the $1000-1500 range.

If you bump up the condition to PSA 9, you’ll be staring at price tags north of $5000.

And if you’re aiming for a perfect “10”? Better have a cool hundred grand or more stashed away to support your Sweetness tooth.

No matter how you look at it, that Walter Payton rookie card has come a long way from its days lurking in the dark corners of a baseball card show, just hoping for a little daylight, a hole to bust through. And, though we may have missed the stutter-step-and-stiff-arm explosion, Payton did, indeed break through, and now streaks eternally across the hobby firmament.

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But when that opportunity knocked, Favre unleashed the wild and free passer who would become known as “The Gunslinger” on the NFL and changed the course of the game’s history…and his cards followed suit.

Indeed, nearly from the moment new Green Bay Packers general manager Ron Wolf traded a first-round pick in February 1992 to the Atlanta Falcons for the QB who had been their second-round pick in 1991, Favre set about making a place for himself in Packers lore.

Taking the reins from an injured Don Majkowski early in the 1992 season, Favre unleashed a barrage of scrambling and ball-heaving that ignited the team and their fanbase and put Green Bay back on the road to reclaiming the crown of Title Town.

Over the next nearly two decades, mostly with the Pack, Favre hardly ever left the field as he led Green Bay to the playoffs nearly every season, including a Super Bowl victory after the 1996 season.

Along the way, Favre racked up three NFL Most Valuable Player awards and retired (?) in 2010 as the all-time leader in passing yards, touchdowns, and interceptions, among other marks.

Also along the way, his cards became hobby favorites as collectors realized that, for all his warts, this free-wheeler was headed straight toward the Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, where he indeed claimed his bust in 2016.

And, although the list of Favre RCs that follows hails from the dark heart of the Junk Wax Era, they remain popular in the hobby more than thirty years after they first popped out of wax packs and Mylar sheathings.

Without further adieu, then, here is the full rundown of Brett Favre rookie cards, complete with typical selling prices for graded PSA 9 copies as late summer 2021, based on information from the PSA Auction Prices Realized tool.

(Note: The following sections contain affiliate links to current Amazon and eBay listings for the Favre cards under consideration.)

1991 Action Packed Rookie Update Brett Favre (#21)

Action Packed was a couple years into their run by the time Favre made his debut with the Falcons, and a lot of the novelty had warn off, especially since new “super premium” brands seemed to hit the market every other week.

Still, by waiting until “rookie update” season, AP was able to get the young QB in his pro uniform, and the combination has remained popular with collectors through the ages.

Today, this card generally land in the $15-20 range in PSA 9 condition.

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1991 Pacific Brett Favre (#551)

Pacific entered an increasingly crowded football card set with a bright and colorful set that definitely fell toward the premium end of the card spectrum … and that also turned out to be overproduced, just like all the others.

Even so, the Favre rookie card presents a solid look at the young gun and sells for about $15 in PSA 9 condition these days.

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1991 Pro Set Brett Favre (#762)

Pro Set was the king of being everywhere all the time, and the result is a glut of cards that the hobby may never work through.

You can see the effect in prices going all the way back to their first set and 1989, and the low population numbers for graded 1991s reflect more apathy among collectors than any sort of scarcity.

The Brett Favre rookie, though, depicts down-and-gritty game action, though, and sells for $15-20 in PSA 9.

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1991 Pro Set Platinum Brett Favre (#290)

Positioned as Pro Set’s premium offering, Platinum was issued in two series for a total of 315 cards in the full set. Like most high-end issues of the day, Platinum featured minimal design elements (just the set logo) to leave plenty of room for big, bold photos.

In Favre’s case, we see the young QB in the pocket with a Rams defender bearing down — could that be Karl Wilson, or maybe Gerald Robinson?

No matter what happened on that play (and you have to think Favre is about to pop a run), this RC sells for about $20 in slabbed MINT condition today.

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1991 Score Brett Favre (#611)

Issued before the 1991 NFL season even started, Score didn’t have the chance to nab a shot of Favre in his Falcons uniform. They also didn’t “treat” collectors to airbrushed photos the way Topps did, and the magic of Photoshop and other more modern photo-editing tools was still years away from the mainstream.

So, what was a card company to do? Why, issue the ’91 rookies — the draft picks, especially — in their college togs, of course!

And so we have this border-fade (how 90s!) Favre rookie card showing him with Southern Miss, where he really began building his gridiron legend.

Expect to pay $20-30 for a copy in PSA 9 condition.

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1991 Stadium Club Brett Favre (#94)

Riding the popularity of their first foray into the world of premium-plus baseball cards, Topps immediately expanded their Stadium Club offering to the gridiron in the fall of 1991.

Featuring a design that’s identical to its diamond counterparts, 1991 Stadium Club football was popular right out of the pack despite its hefty sticker price, and history has been a bit kinder to this issue than its contemporary cardboard brethren.

Consequently, the Gunslinger’s SC entry represents the top of the heap when it comes to Favre rookie cards, checking in at $50-60 in PSA 9 condition.

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1991 Ultra Brett Favre (#283)

Another premium set, Fleer Ultra was also another issue that turned out to be ultra plentiful. So much so that it’s not uncommon to find thousands of cards for sale at garage sales and flea markets for just a few bucks for the whole shebang.

Still, if you can locate a Favre rookie card, which shows him ready to fire a pass for Southern Miss, in graded MINT condition, you can expect about a $20 price tag.

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1991 Upper Deck Brett Favre (#13)

After three summers spent building their brand on the diamond, Upper Deck expanded to the NFL for the first time in 1991.

The upside was that UD brought the same quality product collectors had come to expect: simple and clean design, great photography front and back, Mylar packs and holograms to reduce the likelihood of tampering and counterfeits, a huge checklist with great player selection.

The downside was the same as with just about every other card on this list — overblown production.

No matter how many of these Favre RCs are running around out there in the wild, though, this card showing the BMOC on the Southern Miss sidelines remains the cream of the 1991 Upper Deck crop.

This Brett Favre rookie card sells for about $15-20 in PSA 9 condition.

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