If there’s one thing you can say for 1986 Topps Traded baseball cards, it’s that they made up for lost time.
Because, after a 1985 set that was chock full of big-name rookies, and would-be big-name rookies courtesy of the Olympic subset, the 1986 Topps base set was disappointing by comparison.
There were 1985 Rookie of the Year winners Vince Coleman and Ozzie Guillen … and not much else.
Sure, eventually the Lenny Dykstra, Darren Daulton, and Cecil Fielder cards turned into a little something, but it was slim pickings through that first summer of the 1986s’ life.
And things only got worse when you compared the Topps checklist to those of Fleer and Donruss, who both managed to include RCs of Jose Canseco and Andres Galarraga, among other hot commodities.
But, even though collectors got plenty of hot cardboard from the other manufacturers through the summer, we were always ready for more … so the Topps Traded set couldn’t have come at a better time, for us or for Topps.
That year-end update was an immediate hit, and it’s maintained a pretty solid spot in collectors’ hearts in all the years since.
And that goes double for these ten — they’re the most valuable 1986 Topps Traded baseball cards in PSA 9 condition, based on recent auction sales prices.
(Note: The following sections contain affiliate links to eBay and Amazon links for the cards being discussed.)
1986 Topps Traded Barry Bonds (#11T)
As the son of a successful major leaguer and with a standout college career of his own, Barry Bonds came to the pros with plenty of hype.
But, while his dad, Bobby Bonds, made a name for himself as the most prolific 30-30 man in the game, young Barry was even more tools-y, more about potential.
Early on, Barry brought a lot of speed and on-base ability to the Pittsburgh Pirates, but those skills weren’t all that sexy to collectors during the boom years (or, really ever). So, while Bonds’ first Topps card was somewhat popular, it lagged behind others on this list in terms of value as he built toward his peak.
By the time he copped his second National League MVP award in 1992, though, Bonds was generally considered the best all-around player in the game. And, when he found his major power stroke in moving to the San Francisco Giants the next summer, all of his cards started to percolate.
Of course, Bonds’ game would rise to a new peak a decade later — in 2001, he left Babe Ruth, Roger Maris, Sammy Sosa, and Mark McGwire in his dust to set the single-season home run mark at 73. And then he set about turning the batter’s box into his personal arcade game by getting on base (partly thanks to gobs of intentional walks) and hitting home runs at unprecedented rates.
Those were the skills collectors love, of course, especially the homers, and Bonds’ cards rose like one of his moonshots.
Had it not been for his reputation as something of a churlish boor, Barry’s cards would have set all sorts of records, too.
But, by the time he took down Hank Aaron‘s career home run mark in August of 2007, there was plenty of talk about how he might have had some “help” in his late-career surge, and his card values stagnated to a large degree.
To this point, just after the 2021 Hall of Fame results were announced, Bonds’ presumed PED usage has kept him out of Cooperstown.
It hasn’t kept his first Topps card from climbing to the top of the 1986 Traded heap and staying there, though.
Today, this is about a $30-40 card in PSA 9 condition.
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1986 Topps Traded Bo Jackson (#50T)
Bo Jackson was sort of the anti-Barry — always smiling, flashy in everything he did from the get-go, and a collector favorite right out of the (Topps Traded) box.
In fact, at various points in its history, this Bo card was the most popular and valuable in the entire set.
Today, even though a devastating hip injury killed Jackson’s NFL career in 1991 and severely curtailed his big league tenure, he still remains immensely popular with collectors.
This card checks in at about $30-40 in graded MINT condition.
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1986 Topps Traded Wally Joyner (#51T)
This was one place where Topps didn’t fall behind their competitors in 1986, simply because nobody had Joyner pegged as a breakout star.
After three seasons in the California Angels‘ minor league system, Joyner had established himself as a guy who could hit for a pretty high average but without a lot of power. Not your typical first-base profile, but enough to get him a shot at playing in Anaheim.
And, boy, did he make the most of it!
By the end of May, Joyner was hitting .305 with 16 home runs and 41 RBI, and he was slaying the rookie field, even outpacing a certain hot shot for the Oakland A’s who came with plenty of advance publicity and hobby buzz.
Joyner cooled off from that point to finish with *just* 22 home runs and finish second in the American League Rookie of the Year voting, behind you-know-who.
But in the process of breaking out, Joyner had become Wally World, a national sensation who had collectors clamoring for his card, and it was this RC that really drove the set out of the gate, just like Joyner’s presence in Donruss’s The Rookies made that thing the hit of the late-year releases.
Joyner found another power gear in 1987 (34 dingers, 117 ribbies) before settling into a nice, long semi-star-level career.
These days, PSA 9 copies of Joyner’s first Topps card bring close to $20 most of the time.
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1986 Topps Traded Ken Griffey (#41T)
Ken Griffey was a key (though underrated) member of the Big Red Machine and the still-great Cincinnati Reds teams that followed in the late 1970s and very early 1980s.
And Senior put together a long and distinguished career of his own, one that featured more than 2100 hits, 152 home runs, 200 stolen bases, and a rock-solid .296 batting average.
All of that didn’t land him in this spot, though.
No, what really catapulted Ken Griffey into the hobby spotlight were the on-field exploits of his son, Ken Griffey, J