PSA Set Registry
Collecting the 1961 Topps Baseball Set
Westward Ho!
What do traffic jams in Brooklyn, two teams named the Washington Senators, two teams named the Los Angeles Angels, Branch Rickey, a singing cowboy and a bunch of missing baseball caps have to do with the 1961 Topps baseball set? Read on, and find out...
PROLOGUE: It’s late 1956, and Brooklyn Dodgers baseball club owner Walter O’Malley is getting nowhere in his negotiations with the City of New York for a new ballpark to replace the old, outdated Ebbets Field. O’Malley, who saw his club finally reach the promised land by winning the 1955 World Series, shifts his gaze westward to Los Angeles, a fast-growing metropolis of 2 million+ residents.
He envisions a new, expanded home for his Dodgers, away from the congestion of downtown traffic and equipped with ample parking for fans who could drive right up to the gates from nearby freeways and park near their seats. He imagines lucrative TV contracts and advertising tie-ins and sponsorships. And he has the mayor and city politicians on his side, ready to do whatever it takes to get a major league baseball franchise.
In the fall of 1957 – two years removed from that World Series triumph – O’Malley ambushes Brooklyn fans by packing up and leaving town for The City of Angels, convincing his counterpart on the New York Giants, Horace Stoneham, to join him on the west coast by setting up shop in San Francisco. The unthinkable has happened – now, there’s just one baseball team in the nation’s largest city and TV market.
Besides the lasting enmity O’Malley earns for himself and his executives from those who bleed Dodger Blue, he also unwittingly creates a delayed, major headache for the Topps Chewing Gum Company... as does former Dodgers President and General Manager, Branch Rickey.
Confusion and Intrigue
To diehard baseball fans, the thought of New York City without a National League baseball team was – well – inconceivable. In short order, prominent attorney William (Bill) Shea created the Mayor’s Baseball Committee to figure out some way to bring back a National League team but got nowhere in discussions with both leagues throughout 1958.
Meanwhile, Rickey, who is largely remembered for signing Jackie Robinson to the Dodgers, came up with the idea for a third baseball league in July of 1959 and persuaded Shea to join him. Rickey’s Continental League would site major league teams in Minneapolis, Houston, New York, Denver, Atlanta, Buffalo, Dallas and Toronto – with the exception of Buffalo, all growing metro areas underserved by major league sports. Rickey and potential Toronto owner Jack Kent Cooke even announced opening day for the Continental League would take place in April of 1961.
That certainly got everyone’s attention. While the 1960 baseball season was winding on, National League officials finally woke up and deliberated about the prospects of expansion, finally announcing a plan in August to add four teams, with the first two beginning operations in Houston and New York in 1962. Subsequently, American League officials decided they’d better get with the program, targeting Los Angeles for a second MLB team. But there was a catch – said team would have to begin play in 1961, just a few months away!
Meanwhile, Washington Senators owner Calvin Griffith decided he wanted to decamp to a newer, more promising market in the Minneapolis - St. Paul metro area. American League officials and owners finally gave him permission to do so in October of 1960, and Griffith adopted the name “Twins” for his club, leaving the “Senators” moniker behind for a new expansion team in the District of Columbia that league officials also approved. The latter was largely to hold Congress at bay, as it was during anti-trust investigations of major league baseball related to the reserve clause.
The birth of the new Los Angeles team came right down to the wire. Following the annual baseball winter meetings in early December of 1960, the American League awarded the franchise to movie and radio cowboy star Gene Autry for the tidy sum of $2.1 million. Autry had to fork over an additional $350,000 to the aforementioned Walter O’Malley for the rights to use the name “Los Angeles Angels,” a Pacific Coast League team that O’Malley bought when he moved to California.
The PCL had already lost its unique status as AAAA baseball because of the National League’s expansion to the west coast, reverting to an AAA minor league. Autry’s Angels team would play one season in the original PCL Angels’ Wrigley Field in South Central Los Angeles before moving to Dodger Stadium in 1962. With its existence no longer necessary, the Continental League officially disbanded on August 2, 1960.
Lose the Caps
Got all that? O’Malley’s move west in 1957 was essentially the “butterfly effect.” In his wake, two other MLB teams wound up relocating, while four new teams came into existence by the end of 1962. To say the process was rushed is an understatement: As of early December 1960, the new Washington and Los Angeles franchises had no general managers, no managers or players, no logos or branding, and no way to sell tickets.
In fact, Autry’s group had all of a week to get ready for the expansion draft, which took place on December 14, 1960, and was riddled with problems – some established AL teams lost too many players and had to be compensated with league-mandated trades to balance things out.
Earlier in the year, Topps photographers were busy as usual, shooting pictures of American and National League players for next year’s baseball card set. But now, they had a big problem: Which players would be taken in the upcoming expansion draft? Production on the Topps card designs was already well underway to get mechanicals to the printers in early 1961.
To be sure, Topps wasn’t worried about star players like Stan Musial, Mickey Mantle and Hank Aaron winding up in Washington or Los Angeles. But there were plenty of benchwarmers and players past their prime that were likely candidates for a move. And the usual offseason player trades would further complicate matters.
So, the order came down from Topps HQ: In addition to the normal action and portrait poses of each player in full uniform, capless, head-and-shoulder photos also had to be taken, making sure no team insignias were visible. Given all the chaos leading up to the 1961 season, it should be no surprise that a large number of these plain vanilla photographs, along with a few airbrushed images, did wind up in the 1961 Topps baseball set. (A few stars were also featured without their caps or any team logo showing, but the reasons why have been lost to time.)
The Year
Nineteen sixty-one wasn’t just a milestone year because of expansion. Everyone remembers the epic 1961 home run chase between Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle, with Mantle dropping out in mid-September with 54 dingers due to a hip injury and Maris blasting home run #61 on the last day of the season, October 1, off Red Sox rookie pitcher Tracy Stallard.
What is not generally remembered about Maris is that he was also walked 94 times and led the American League with 132 runs scored and 142 RBIs but didn’t even finish in the top 25 batting averages with a measly .269 effort. Despite Mantle’s abbreviated season, his batting average was .317, good enough for fourth place behind the Detroit Tigers’ dynamic duo of Norm Cash (.361) and Al Kaline (.324) and Jimmy Piersall of the Cleveland Indians (.322).
While the 1961 Yankees (109-53) are considered to be one of the best teams of all time, the Detroit Tigers weren’t exactly chopped meat, finishing eight games behind at 101-61. That hastily assembled Angels roster out-performed expectations with a 70-91 log, good enough for eighth place ahead of the perennial doormat Kansas City Athletics and the “new” Washington Senators, who tied for last place with dismal 61-100 records.
Yankees hurler Whitey Ford had his best season to date, winning 25 games and losing just four with a 3.21 ERA and 209 strikeouts. Ace reliever Luis Arroyo saved 29 games for New York and won 15, while Camilo Pascual led the AL in strikeouts for Washington (221) and teammate Dick Donovan finished with the lowest ERA (2.40), both impressive numbers for a last place team.
Over in the National League, an average pitcher named Sandy Koufax was just starting to show signs of brilliance for the Dodgers, tossing 269 strikeouts and winning 18 games with an ERA of 3.52. His teammate Johnny Podres finished with an 18-5 record, while Don Drysdale picked up 13 additional wins and added 182 strikeouts, creating one heck of a 1-2-3 punch on the mound. But the ageless Warren Spahn, who turned 40 at the start of the season, stole the show by winning 25 games (tied with Joey Jay of the Reds), pitching 21 complete games and four shutouts, and compiling a 3.02 ERA.
Several teams were picked as favorites to win the National League pennant in ’61, among them the defending champion Pittsburgh Pirates, the ’59 champion Dodgers, and a powerful San Francisco Giants club. But it was the Cincinnati Reds who ultimately prevailed with a 93-61 record, finishing four games ahead of Los Angeles (the National League still played a 154-game schedule in 1961). Orlando Cepeda of the Giants captured the home run crown with 46 round-trippers, while Roberto Clemente of the Pirates finished with a strong batting average of.351. Cepeda drove in 142, while teammate Willie Mays scored 129 runs.
Given all the excitement of the regular season, the World Series was a bit of a letdown. Given that the Yankees had hit a record 240 home runs during the regular season, it wasn’t a surprise that the Reds were only competitive in Game 2, winning 6-2 behind Jay after losing 2-0 to Ford in Game 1 on (what else?) a pair of home runs by Elston Howard and Bill Skowron.
Game 3 was the closest of the Series, with Cincy holding a 1-0 lead after 3 innings. But the “Bronx Bombers” stuck again, with backup catcher John Blanchard going round the bases in the 8th inning to tie the game and Maris hitting one out of the park to win it in the 9th. Ace reliever Arroyo closed out the win, and it was all downhill after that for the Reds as they were shut out 7-0 in Game 4 by Ford and Jim Coates (with no NY home runs, no less!) and clobbered in Game 5, 13-5 as Blanchard and outfielder Hector Lopez cleared the bases.
The Set
The 1961 Topps baseball set is significant for a few reasons. It’s the first set after expansion from eight AL teams to 10. While reviving the Topps “baseball thrills” highlights cards from 1959, it added subsets of AL and NL statistical league leaders and Most Valuable Players. And it was Topps’ largest set to date, clocking in with a total of 587 cards, an increase of 15 cards from 1960. One could make the argument that it was the definitive set of the decade, just as Topps’ initial offering in 1952 was the high point of the ‘50s.
The design is very clean and one of Topps’ simplest, dropping the team logos that were a feature from 1952 to 1955 and 1958 through 1960. (Team logos didn’t return until 1965.) Each card featured a color photo, the player’s name and position in one colored block, and the team name in separate colored block. Combination cards were designed the same way, and seven checklists were sprinkled throughout the set, some with two or more variations.
Thanks to the late expansion draft and a bunch of trades, there are an amazing 95 capless, insignia-less headshots in the set, or 16% of all cards. And what could be more forgettable to an eight-year-old kid (me) than a close-up headshot of some obscure player I didn’t know, pictured without his cap and playing for a team I never heard of? And here’s a puzzler: Future Hall of Famers Harmon Killebrew (card #80), Willie Mays (#150) and Ernie Banks (#350) were also depicted sans caps and logos. Did Topps really think any of these three stars could wind up in the expansion draft or traded to another team?
One unfortunate “capless” photo, Cal McLish’s #157 entry, caught him with his eyes closed. (HOFer Hoyt Wilhelm did the same thing on card #545.) And three Yankee players who were left unprotected in the expansion draft still appeared in their New York uniforms – Bobby Shantz (#379), Johnny James (#457) and Leroy Thomas (#464). Shantz was taken in the draft by the new Washington Senators and later traded to Pittsburgh, while James and Thomas wound up in Los Angeles. (Topps had probably given up on trying to hide team insignias by that point.)
The 1961 Topps set also depicts turning points for many players. Hall of Famers Roberto Clemente (#388), Killebrew (#80), Koufax (#344), Frank Robinson (#360), Brooks Robinson (#10), Banks (#350), Willie McCovey (#517), Bob Gibson (#211), Hank Aaron (#415), Carl Yastrzemski (#287), Orlando Cepeda (#435), Luis Aparicio (#440), Don Drysdale (#260) and Whitey Ford (#160) were revving up their careers or hitting peak performance.
Other players like Mantle (#300), Nellie Fox (#30), Warren Spahn (#200), Ed Mathews (#120) Stan Musial (#250), Mays (#150), Duke Snider (#443), Richie Ashburn (#88), Yogi Berra (#425) and Early Wynn (#455) were (with a few exceptions) moving past their best years and looking toward Cooperstown. And there were a few promising rookies, like Ron Santo (#35), Jim Kaat (#63), Billy Williams (#141), Chuck Estrada (#395), Dick Howser (#416), Juan Marichal (#417), Ron Perranoski (#525) and Jim Gentile (#559).
Pitcher Eli Grba (#121) is notable as he was the first player drafted by the Angels from the Yankees’ roster, while pitcher Rudy Hernandez (#229) was the last player drafted overall, going from the original Senators team (now the Twins) to the new Senators team... making him an instant answer to a trivia question: Name a player who changed teams without changing cities, stadiums or locker rooms?
Thanks to the chaos caused by relocation, the expansion draft and Topps’ tight printing deadlines, no players from the transplanted Twins show up in 1961 Topps until the 2nd Series, led by catcher Hal Naragon on card #92 (capless, or course!). The same can be said of the first player for the new expansion Senators, Dale Long, who appears on card #117 (again, capless).
The first Twins player to appear with the new Twin Cities logo on his cap was 3rd baseman Reno Bertoia (#392) in the 5th Series, and the first Senator similarly garbed was Coot Veal (#432) in the 6th Series. The Twins team (formerly Washington Senators, 1960) doesn’t make an appearance until the 7th Series on card #542. And don’t bother looking for team cards for Washington and Los Angeles – they don’t exist.
Those patchwork Angels did manage to get 27 player appearances in the 1961 set with a motley crew of youngsters and older benchwarmers, but they were also absent from the 1st Series. The first Angels player capped with an Angels logo was third baseman Eddie Yost (#413) in the 5th series, and the next was catcher Del Rice (#448). Pitcher Ron Moeller (#466) appears with an airbrushed solid blue cap. Shortstop Rocky Bridges (#508) also sports the new Angels cap, as does rookie Gene Leek (#527) – and that’s it.
Ironically, the best of the Angels draft picks, Dean Chance, went completely missing from the set, only appearing in a handful of games at the end of the 1961 season. But he would go on to win 20 games twice in his career along with a Cy Young Award in 1964, leading the American League in wins, earned run average, innings pitched, complete games and shutouts.
Errors and Variations
In general, 1961 Topps cards aren’t hard to find in nice shape – that is, if you don’t mind centering problems. Trying to build a high-grade set with strong centering can take a few years, particularly if you are looking for raw cards to grade. That’s especially true of the 7th and final series of cards (#517 - #589), which features a few stars like McCovey and the 1961 Sporting News All-Star players and whose cards command a price premium over those from the rest of the set.
There are quite a few errors in 1961 Topps. You’ll find two cards numbered #463: The first is the Milwaukee Braves team card and the second is of Baltimore Orioles pitcher Jack Fisher. (The Braves team card should have been numbered #426.). Zoilo Versalles’ #21 card has his first name misspelled as “Zorro,” and it certainly came as a surprise to Cleveland Indians pitcher Jim Perry that he was the Baltimore Orioles’ leader in wins (#48) for 1960!
Boston Red Sox shortstop Don Buddin (#99) was probably thrilled to find out he hit 66 home runs in 1959; Whitey Ford was likely wondering how he lost ten inches off his height (#160) and Sherman Jones (#161) was certainly shocked to find he looked exactly like Giants pitcher Eddie Fisher (#366). Card #332 shows Tom Dotterer, Dutch Dotterer’s brother, while Orlando Cepeda (#435) played for the “San Francis” Giants in 1961.
According to the back of Don Zimmer’s #493 entry, the Brooklyn Dodgers were in the American League from 1954 to 1957 and stayed there when they moved to Los Angeles in 1958. (If so, why was another AL expansion team needed in the City of Angels?) Dick Farrell’s #522 card shows him in a Phillies uniform and cap but lists his team as the Dodgers.
And the 587th and last card in the set, Warren Spahn’s All-Star showcase, is numbered #589, leading everyone to wonder what happened to cards #587 and #588... even though checklist #7 shows Spahn’s card numbered as #587. As a result, 1961 Topps is one of their more goof-prone offerings, and one must wonder if all the confusion from the late expansion draft earlier in the year rippled throughout Topps’ quality control personnel.
The variations on the 1961 set are largely limited to the seven checklists. Starting with Checklist 2, if you come across a version with the “CHECK LIST” header in red text (variation #98a), congratulations! You’ve scooped up a real scarcity. Variation #98b is found with yellow text in the header like the other checklists, and on the reverse, the number “98” appears as black text on a white circle. But hold on –there’s also a variation (#98c) that has the number “98” as white text on a black circle on the reverse!
It doesn’t end there. On Checklist 3 (#189), the Topps copyright symbol on the reverse can line up next to either Ken Hamlin’s (#189a) or Glen Hobbie’s (#189b) name. A similar variation is seen on Checklist 4 (#273), where the copyright alignment is either with Don Mincher’s (#273a) or Gene Baker’s (#273b) name.
Checklist 5 (#361) is found with the “TOPPS BASEBALL” header in either yellow or black text, while Checklist 6 (#437) is found with Louis Aparicio’s name spelled “Luis” or “Louis.” (Make up your mind!) Finally, Checklist 7 (#516) can be found with the second letter “C” covering or sitting above the cap of Milwaukee Braves second baseman Chuck Cottier. Good luck finding all of them!
Scarcities and Values
As of this writing, PSA has graded more than 300,000 cards from the 1961 Topps baseball set, with almost 234,000 achieving the PSA NM 7 level or higher (about 70% of all submissions). Over 21,000 submissions have come back in PSA MINT 9 or PSA GEM-MT 10 holders, or 6% of all cards graded. As mentioned earlier, it’s not hard to find ’61 Topps in nice shape, but the challenge remains centering, with certain cards being chronically off-kilter.
Some are easier to uncover in high grade than others, like Gary Geiger (#33). Of his card, 341 copies have received a PSA NM-MT 8 and 16 a PSA NM-MT+ 8.5, with an additional 95 grading PSA 9 and five achieving PSA 10 status, numbers more typical of modern era card issues. On the other hand, Ralph Houk’s #133 manager card has only earned 70 PSA 8s, one PSA 8.5 and just two PSA 9s, with nothing higher – largely due to centering problems.
Checklist 3 (version #189b) has only earned 64 PSA 8s, three PSA 8.5s and 10 MT 9s with nothing higher, while card # 306, World Series Game 1 (Virdon Saves Game) is another toughie – 85 PSA 8s and six PSA 9s, nothing higher. Checklist 5 (#361b), with “TOPPS BASEBALL” in yellow, is another rare sighting, with 57 PSA 8s and 10 PSA 9s, while Ron Fairly’s #492 card, with a smudge of green on the bottom of the baseball on the reverse, has been graded a total of 90 times, resulting in just 13 PSA 8s, one PSA 8.5 and two PSA 9s.
Not surprisingly, the most valuable card in the set is Mickey Mantle’s #300 portrait, which currently fetches around $3,500 in PSA 8 condition (and still climbing!). Additionally, the Mick’s #475 MVP card is valued at $575 and his #578 All-Star portrait follows right behind at $1,000. Hank Aaron’s #415 is listed at $950. Other notable cards are Willie Mays (#150) at $600, Ralph Houk’s tough #133 card at $325 alongside Jim Gentile’s #559 high number, and one of the toughest cards in the set, #563 Bob Cerv, at $300.
If you’re getting the idea that high-grade 1961 Topps stars are quite the bargain compared to 1960 and 1962, go to the head of the class! Historically, ’61 prices have always lagged behind those years, which could be due to a combination of these cards being available in larger quantities and consistently higher condition than either of those two years. That theory is supported by the fact that PSA has graded (to date) almost 61,000 fewer 1960 Topps cards and almost 137,000 fewer 1962 Topps cards.
Even so, there have been a few notable sales of high-grade 1961 Topps in recent years. A PSA 9 #300 Mantle sold for $19,800 in April 2021 through Robert Edward Auctions, while a PSA 10 #472 Berra MVP (another “tough” card) fetched $5,280 in April 2019 via Heritage Auctions. The following year, a PSA 10 #312 World Series Game 7 changed hands for $2,827 through Memory Lane Inc., while a PSA 10 #287 Yastrzemski went for $12,222 on eBay. Card #306 (Virdon Saves Game) gaveled down at $3,218 in January 2020 while a PSA 10 #406 (Mantle Blasts 565 Ft. Home Run) sold for $6,838 in June 2020, both through Memory Lane, Inc.
The Wrap-Up
It’s a safe bet that most collectors of 1961 Topps cards are unaware of the tumult behind its creation or the reasons why so many players in the set appear without caps or logos. (And how many collectors have noticed six decades later that there aren’t any team cards for Washington and Los Angeles in the set?) Even so, 1961 Topps is a great snapshot of major league baseball exiting its “golden age” and entering the modern era of expansion.
It’s loaded with Hall of Famers – all the big names are here – plus themed and combination card subsets (did I mention that Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth and Walter Johnson all make appearances?). The checklist variations will keep you busy for a while, and while the high numbers command a premium, you can find nice copies if you’re willing to be patient and dig deep through dealer albums and boxes. And best of all, collecting 1961 Topps baseball won’t break your bank! Visit the PSA Set Registry to start your collection today.