Rick Barry
Golden State Warriors Hall of Famer and 1975 Finals MVP — the man who led the Warriors to their first title on the West Coast. A guide to collecting Rick Barry's rookie card, vintage NBA and ABA issues, and what to look for.
- Position
- Small Forward
- Team
- Golden State Warriors
- NBA Debut
- 1965
- Rookie Card
- 1971
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Rick Barry is a Golden State Warriors franchise legend — Rookie of the Year in 1966, the NBA scoring champion in 1966-67, and the 1975 Finals MVP who led the Warriors to their first championship after the franchise moved west to the Bay Area. He is the only player to have led the NCAA, the ABA and the NBA in scoring average, his No. 24 hangs retired by the Warriors, and he entered the Hall of Fame in 1987 (career record). Famous for his unorthodox underhand free-throw style and one of the purest scorers of his era, Barry is a cornerstone name for any collector building a Warriors legends collection.
What to collect
Barry’s actual rookie card is his 1971-72 Topps #170, issued during his ABA years — pictured with the New York Nets, since he’d already left the NBA for the ABA by the time Topps returned to basketball in 1969-70 and was never included in that set. That timeline is the part you can check: Barry played in the ABA from 1968 to 1972, with the Oakland Oaks (later the Washington Caps) through 1970 and the New York Nets from 1970 to 1972, before returning to the NBA (career record). The two card numbers on this page (#170 and #44) are pre-2022 issues; every card-checklist source we can reach indexes 2022 onward only, so treat those numbers as the market’s long-standing convention rather than something we have re-verified against a published checklist — read the number off the card itself before you pay up. Because it is a genuinely vintage issue, condition and grade matter enormously: a high-grade, well-centered example is worth dramatically more than a raw, off-center one. His first card as a Golden State Warrior comes on the 1972-73 Topps #44, after his return to the NBA — the card most Warriors-focused collectors chase alongside the ABA rookie.
Buying tips
- Buy graded (PSA, SGC, BGS) for the rookie — authenticity and condition sensitivity are very high for vintage cards of this stature.
- Centering, corners, and surface separate common copies from valuable ones on both the ABA rookie and the Warriors 1972-73 issue.
- Beware of reprints and counterfeits for a card this collectible — buy from reputable, high-feedback sellers with clear photos of the actual card.
- The eBay rails above show live Barry listings — rookies, graded slabs, and vintage lots.
Where Barry fits in a Warriors collection
Barry sits alongside Wilt Chamberlain at the top tier of vintage Warriors names — the two blue-chip Hall of Famers whose cards anchor a franchise-legends collection. Pair them with modern-dynasty pillars like Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson to span every era of Warriors basketball. For the bigger picture, see our guide to collecting Golden State Warriors cards, the best Warriors cards to collect, and the Warriors Legends list.