1989 Score Barry Sanders #257 RC

The set that beat everyone to the rookies

The company behind Score had operated as Optigraphics before renaming itself Score in 1988 and issuing a baseball set. Its 1989 football set made the brand's name. The regular series has 330 cards with blue, red or green borders; each front carries a color photo, a team helmet logo, the player's name and position, and the back has a second photo, statistics and a short biography. A 110-card supplemental factory set with purple borders, numbered 331S to 440S, followed in January 1990.

Score's timing made the set. Its two biggest rookies, Barry Sanders and Troy Aikman, were in the regular Score set but not in the first Pro Set or Topps products of the year. The checklist also includes the rookie cards of Deion Sanders, Cris Carter, Michael Irvin, Bruce Matthews, Rod Woodson, Tim Brown and Thurman Thomas, alongside Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Steve Young and Dan Marino. Rookie cards carry a portrait and a "1989 Rookie" banner across the border, so a collector knew at a glance what had been pulled.

Collectors and shop owners remember Score as harder to find than its competitors. One former card-shop owner recalled that everyone who came in wanted Score and that there was less of it than Topps. Cards came in wax packs, factory sets and vending boxes.

Barry Sanders

Barry Sanders was born July 16, 1968, in Wichita, Kansas. At Oklahoma State he replaced Thurman Thomas as the lead runner and in 1988 produced one of the greatest seasons in college football: 2,628 rushing yards and 37 rushing touchdowns in 11 games, with 3,250 all-purpose yards and 39 total touchdowns. He won the Heisman Trophy in December 1988 and accepted it by satellite from Tokyo.

The Detroit Lions took him third overall in the 1989 draft. A contract dispute kept him out of training camp until he signed a five-year, $9.5 million deal with a $2.1 million signing bonus, and he gave $210,000 of the bonus to his church.

As a rookie he ran for 1,470 yards and 14 touchdowns in 15 games, made the Pro Bowl and first-team All-Pro, and was named Offensive Rookie of the Year. It was the first of 10 straight 1,000-yard seasons, the full length of his career, all with Detroit.

Ten seasons, then a fax

Sanders made the Pro Bowl in every one of his 10 seasons and was a first-team All-Pro six times. In 1994 he ran for 1,883 yards and was named Offensive Player of the Year. In 1997 he ran for 2,053 yards at 6.1 yards a carry, with 14 straight 100-yard games, an NFL record, and shared the league MVP award with Brett Favre.

Then he left. On July 27, 1999, he announced his retirement by fax to The Wichita Eagle, his hometown newspaper. He was 1,457 yards short of Walter Payton's career rushing record, with 15,269 yards and 99 rushing touchdowns at 5.0 yards per carry.

He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on August 8, 2004, at 36, then the second-youngest inductee.

From $175 to a steady four figures

When PSA profiled the set in January 2008, a PSA 10 Sanders had sold for $175 in an online auction the previous August, and 546 of the 13,783 Sanders cards PSA had graded had earned a 10. The Aikman card, similar in value, had been submitted less than half as often, largely because collectors could see its centering problems before paying to grade it.

By October 2026, PSA had graded 36,214 copies of the Sanders card and 2,533 had reached PSA 10, while 13,655 sat at PSA 9. The price gap between those two grades is the story of the modern market for this card: in 2026, most PSA 9 copies sold for under $250, while PSA 10 copies sold in online auctions for about $1,950 to $2,325.

PSA's own sales record also shows five PSA 10 sales in June and July 2026 at $5,190 to $5,879. The record does not explain why those ran more than twice the level of every other PSA 10 sale that year, so they are left off the price chart here. The latest auction sale recorded before this page was written was $2,100 on September 27, 2026.

What to look for

The Sanders card has a green border. Collectors who built complete PSA 10 sets of 1989 Score say the colored borders chip readily, with the damage most visible on green, red and blue edges, and that centering is the other gatekeeper: many cards are slightly off-center.

Counterfeits of the Sanders and Aikman rookies exist. Signs include blurry printing and color differences from genuine cards, which is why graded copies are the safer purchase.

The set has error cards, the best known being Tim Brown's All-Pro card (#305), which shows a photo of James Lofton. Errors generally carry no premium; the corrected versions are reportedly scarcer. Among the commons, some cards are far harder in PSA 10 than the Sanders: in 2008 Andre Tippett (#55) had only three PSA 10 examples, each held by a collector with a complete PSA 10 set.

The numbers

1989 season (rookie card year)

15 G, 13 GS, 280 att, 1,470 yds, 14 TD, 5.3 Y/A, 98.0 yds/game; 24 rec, 282 yds. Pro Bowl, first-team All-Pro, Offensive Rookie of the Year.

1994 season

16 G, 331 att, 1,883 yds, 7 TD, 5.7 Y/A. Offensive Player of the Year.

1997 season

16 G, 335 att, 2,053 yds, 11 TD, 6.1 Y/A, 128.3 yds/game; 2,358 yds from scrimmage. AP MVP (shared), Offensive Player of the Year.

Career (1989-1998, Detroit)

153 G, 3,062 att, 15,269 yds, 99 TD, 5.0 Y/A; 352 rec, 2,921 yds, 10 TD.

Honors

10 Pro Bowls, 6x first-team All-Pro, 1997 MVP, Hall of Fame 2004

College (Oklahoma State, 1988)

2,628 rushing yards, 37 rushing TD in 11 games; Heisman Trophy

Draft

1989, first round, 3rd overall, Detroit Lions

Timeline

1. Jul 16, 1968

   Barry Sanders is born in Wichita, Kansas.

2. Dec 1988

   Sanders wins the Heisman Trophy after rushing for 2,628 yards at Oklahoma State, accepting by satellite from Tokyo.

3. 1989

   Detroit drafts Sanders third overall; Score issues its 330-card football set with Sanders as #257.

4. 1989

   Sanders runs for 1,470 yards and is named Offensive Rookie of the Year.

5. Jan 1990

   Score issues a 110-card supplemental factory set with purple borders.

6. 1994

   Sanders runs for 1,883 yards and is named Offensive Player of the Year.

7. 1997

   Sanders runs for 2,053 yards and shares the NFL MVP award with Brett Favre.

8. Jul 27, 1999

   Sanders retires by fax to The Wichita Eagle, 1,457 yards short of the career rushing record.

9. Aug 8, 2004

   Sanders is inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame at 36.

10. Aug 2007

    A PSA 10 copy sells for $175 in an online auction.

11. Jan 2, 2008

    PSA reports 546 PSA 10s among 13,783 Sanders cards graded.

12. Mar 30, 2026

    A PSA 10 copy sells at online auction for $2,325.

13. Sep 27, 2026

    A PSA 10 copy sells at auction for $2,100.

14. Oct 2026

    PSA's count stands at 2,533 PSA 10s among 36,214 graded.

The world in 1989

• Jan 20, 1989

  George H. W. Bush is inaugurated as president.

• Mar 24, 1989

  The Exxon Valdez spills oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound.

• Jun 23, 1989

  Batman opens in theaters.

• Jul 5, 1989

  Seinfeld premieres.

• Aug 24, 1989

  Pete Rose accepts a lifetime ban from baseball.

• Oct 17, 1989

  The Loma Prieta earthquake strikes the San Francisco Bay Area, killing 63.

• Oct 18, 1989

  Space Shuttle Atlantis deploys the Galileo probe toward Jupiter.

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, 1989 Score Barry Sanders #257 RC is number 91 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 (51 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Score had Sanders and Troy Aikman in its regular 1989 set while the first Pro Set and Topps releases that year did not.
• Sanders retired by fax to his hometown newspaper, 1,457 yards short of Walter Payton's career rushing record.
• He accepted the 1988 Heisman Trophy by satellite from Tokyo.
• He gave $210,000 of his $2.1 million rookie signing bonus to his church.
• In 2008 a PSA 10 Sanders sold for $175; in 2026 they sold for about $2,000 or more.
• Tim Brown's All-Pro card in the same set shows a photo of James Lofton.
• Sanders ran for at least 1,000 yards in every one of his 10 NFL seasons.