1957 Topps Johnny Unitas #138 RC

The year Topps got serious about football

Before 1957, Topps had treated football as a sideline. Its earlier gridiron issues were a felt-backed set, a group of 'scratch-off' cards and the colorful All-Americans, all featuring only college players. It dabbled in the NFL for the first time in 1956, after its rival Bowman was no longer a factor, with a 120-card set that read like a shortened version of its baseball issue.

The 1957 set was different. It ran to 154 cards in the new standard size of 2 1/2 by 3 1/2 inches, turned horizontal, and paired a close-up head shot with a posed or action photo of the same player on a solid color background. The backs carried a short biography, statistics and a cartoon. Collectors credit the year as the first time Topps issued sets in all four major sports.

Topps released the cards in two series. The first ran from #1 to #88; the second, the high numbers, ran from #89 to #154. Because a printed sheet held 88 cards and the second series had only 66 subjects, 22 empty slots were filled by printing 22 second-series cards twice. The best known of those double prints is #138, John Unitas.

The cards were sold in a one-cent pack with one card and a stick of gum, a five-cent pack with six cards and gum, and a cello pack of 12. The penny packs used a white wrapper that let a buyer see the card inside, and the gum inside is the source of the stains that still mark some survivors.

From $6 a game to the Colts

John Constantine Unitas was born May 7, 1933, in Pittsburgh, the third of four children of Lithuanian-descended parents. His father ran a small coal delivery business and died when Johnny was five; his mother kept the business going and cleaned offices four nights a week to hold the family together. At St. Justin's High School he played halfback and quarterback and was named quarterback on Pittsburgh's All-Catholic team as a senior.

He played college football at Louisville, completing 247 of 502 passes for 2,912 yards and 27 touchdowns. The hometown Pittsburgh Steelers drafted him in the ninth round, 102nd overall, in 1955, then released him before the season. Head coach Walt Kiesling reportedly thought he was not smart enough to run an NFL offense and gave him no snaps in practice.

Married and out of football, Unitas worked construction in Pittsburgh and played quarterback, safety and punter on weekends for the semipro Bloomfield Rams for $6 a game. In 1956 a Rams teammate, lineman Jim Deglau, asked him along to a scheduled tryout with the Baltimore Colts; the two borrowed gas money from friends to make the trip. The Colts signed him.

His first real action, after starter George Shaw broke his leg against the Chicago Bears, began with an interception returned for a touchdown and a fumbled handoff. He recovered quickly. He threw nine touchdown passes that season, the last of them starting a streak of 47 straight games with a touchdown pass, and his 55.6 percent completion rate was third in the league.

Baltimore, 1957

The card reached packs in the season Unitas became a full-time starter. In 1957 he led the NFL in passing yards (2,550), touchdown passes (24) and passer rating (88.0) as the Colts went 7-5, the first winning record in franchise history. The Newspaper Enterprise Association named him the league's Most Valuable Player.

The next year he made the card famous. On December 28, 1958, Unitas led a late drive to tie the NFL Championship Game against the New York Giants and then drove the Colts again in sudden-death overtime; Alan Ameche's touchdown won it 23-17. It was the first overtime game in NFL history, it was televised nationally, and it has been credited with sparking pro football's rise in the 1960s.

In 1959 he threw a record 32 touchdown passes, the first quarterback to reach 30 in a season, won his first Associated Press MVP award and led a second straight championship. Vince Lombardi, then a rookie head coach in Green Bay, said of him: 'He's the best quarterback I've ever seen.'

Outside football, 1957 was the year of Eisenhower's second inauguration, Little Rock, Sputnik, 'Leave It to Beaver' and Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road.'

What to look for in a PSA 8

The Unitas card shows the quarterback twice: a portrait at left and a second photo at right, split by a white line and framed in a white border. As on most of the set, the caption box at lower right lists position and team in small black type; space was tight enough that quarterbacks were often listed simply as backs.

The 1957 cards were printed on durable stock, and high-grade sets exist. But the Unitas card is described as tough to find in high grade and subject to the issue's usual condition problems: centering, corners and gum stains from the penny packs. A sale listing from 2025 shows how much a qualifier matters: a PSA 8 with a miscut (MC) qualifier sold for $1,299, a fraction of the price of clean PSA 8 copies in the same year.

PSA's population report counts 192 copies graded PSA 8, with 20 graded higher, including 9 PSA 9s. No PSA 10 is reported. At the grade tracked here, the highest recorded sale we found since 2021 is $14,500, in November 2021; sales in 2025 and 2026 have mostly landed between $8,500 and $10,000. The most recent PSA 9 sale shown by the grader was $92,062.50; its date is not given on the page we checked.

The record book on a piece of cardboard

Unitas played 17 seasons in Baltimore and one in San Diego. He finished with 2,830 completions in 5,186 attempts for 40,239 yards and 290 touchdowns, the first quarterback to throw for more than 40,000 yards, in an era of 12- and 14-game seasons. He won three AP MVP awards (1959, 1964, 1967), made 10 Pro Bowls and was a five-time first-team All-Pro.

His 47-game touchdown-pass streak, running from 1956 to 1960, was long considered unbreakable. It stood for 52 years, until Drew Brees passed it on October 7, 2012. Unitas won Super Bowl V after the 1970 season, entered the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979 and died September 11, 2002.

The set he anchors is counted among the best Topps ever made for football, with 31 Hall of Famers, about one in five cards. Among them, the trio of Unitas, Starr and Hornung rookies is described as one of the strongest groups of debut cards in any sport.

The numbers

1956 season (rookie)

12 G, 6 GS, 3-4 as starter, 110 of 198 (55.6%), 1,498 yds, 9 TD, 10 INT, 74.0 rating

1957 season (card year)

12 G, 11 GS, 7-5, 172 of 301 (57.1%), 2,550 yds, 24 TD, 17 INT, 88.0 rating. Led NFL in yards, TD and rating; Pro Bowl; NEA MVP

1958 season

10 G, 8-1, 136 of 263, 2,007 yds, 19 TD, 7 INT, 90.0 rating. First-team All-Pro; NFL champion

1959 season

12 G, 9-3, 193 of 367, 2,899 yds, 32 TD, 14 INT, 92.0 rating. AP MVP; NFL champion

Career (1956-1973)

211 G, 118-63-4 as starter, 2,830 of 5,186 (54.6%), 40,239 yds, 290 TD, 253 INT, 78.2 rating

Honors

3x AP MVP (1959, 1964, 1967), 10 Pro Bowls, 5x first-team All-Pro, 3 NFL titles plus Super Bowl V

Hall of Fame

Pro Football Hall of Fame, 1979

Streak

47 straight games with a touchdown pass, 1956-1960

Timeline

1. May 7, 1933

   John Unitas is born in Pittsburgh.

2. 1955

   The Pittsburgh Steelers draft Unitas in the ninth round, 102nd overall, then release him before the season.

3. 1955

   Unitas works construction and plays for the semipro Bloomfield Rams for $6 a game.

4. 1956

   Unitas signs with the Baltimore Colts after a tryout and takes over when George Shaw breaks his leg.

5. 1957

   Topps issues its 154-card football set; Unitas is #138 in the high-number series, double printed on the sheet.

6. 1957

   Unitas leads the NFL in passing yards, touchdowns and passer rating; the Colts post their first winning season.

7. Dec 28, 1958

   Unitas leads the Colts to a 23-17 overtime win over the Giants in the NFL Championship Game.

8. 1959

   Unitas throws a record 32 touchdown passes, wins his first AP MVP award and a second straight title.

9. 1970

   Unitas leads the Colts through the season that ends with the Super Bowl V title.

10. 1973

    Unitas plays his final season, with the San Diego Chargers.

11. 1979

    Unitas is inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

12. Sep 11, 2002

    Unitas dies at 69.

13. Oct 7, 2012

    Drew Brees breaks Unitas's 47-game touchdown-pass streak after 52 years.

14. Nov 12, 2021

    A PSA 8 copy sells online for $14,500, the highest PSA 8 figure in the sales we found.

15. Jun 15, 2026

    A PSA 8 copy sells at online auction for $8,600.

16. Sep 20, 2026

    A PSA 8 copy sells for $8,845.

The world in 1957

• Jan 20, 1957

  Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon are inaugurated for a second term.

• Mar 26, 1957

  Elvis Presley buys Graceland for $100,000.

• May 3, 1957

  Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley agrees to move the team to Los Angeles.

• Aug 28, 1957

  Senator Strom Thurmond sets the filibuster record at 24 hours and 18 minutes against a civil rights bill.

• Sep 5, 1957

  Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road' is published.

• Sep 24, 1957

  Eisenhower sends federal troops to Little Rock to escort the Little Rock Nine into Central High School.

• Sep 26, 1957

  'West Side Story' opens on Broadway.

• Oct 4, 1957

  'Leave It to Beaver' premieres on CBS.

Daily price data

FLOAT reprices this card every day from completed sales. Last updated November 12, 2026.

No completed sale at PSA 8 is on record yet. The same card at other grades:

Every grade and recorded sale for this card

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, 1957 Topps Johnny Unitas #138 RC is number 70 of 100 in the trading cards entries of the FLOAT 100. 97 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (52 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The Unitas card was double printed: 22 high-number cards appeared twice on each 88-card sheet, and #138 is the best known of them.
• The Steelers who drafted Unitas in 1955 cut him without giving him snaps in practice; he then played semipro ball for $6 a game.
• Unitas drove to his Colts tryout with a semipro teammate on gas money borrowed from friends.
• His first meaningful NFL pass was intercepted and returned for a touchdown.
• Because the caption box was so small, quarterbacks in the 1957 set are often listed simply as backs.
• No PSA 10 Unitas rookie is reported; PSA counts 9 copies at PSA 9.
• His 47-game touchdown streak lasted 52 years before Drew Brees broke it in 2012.