1958 Topps #257 Hal W. Smith
About Hal W. Smith
Card #257 in the 1958 Topps set, a series 3 number, shows Hal Smith with the Kansas City Athletics. The 1957 season it followed was his first .300 year in the majors: .303 with 13 home runs and 41 RBI in 107 games, 103 of them as catcher. He had come to Kansas City in an August 1956 swap for fellow backstop Joe Ginsberg.
Harold Wayne Smith was a right-handed catcher who appeared in 879 games over ten major league seasons from 1955 to 1964, filling in at third base and first base along the way. Signed by the New York Yankees out of high school in 1949, he never played an inning for them; a 17-player trade after the 1954 season sent him to Baltimore, where he opened 1955 as the Orioles' starting catcher and played a career-high 135 games. Traded to Kansas City in August 1956, he put up his best year at the plate in 1957, batting .303 with 26 doubles and 13 home runs. The Pirates acquired him after the 1959 season, and in 1960 he platooned behind the plate with left-handed-hitting Smoky Burgess, batting .295 with 11 home runs and 45 runs batted in. He is remembered for the three-run homer off Jim Coates in the eighth inning of Game Seven of the 1960 World Series, which put Pittsburgh ahead 9-7 an inning before Bill Mazeroski's walk-off settled it. Houston took him in the 1961 expansion draft, and he finished up with Cincinnati in 1964, closing with 715 hits, 58 home runs, 323 runs batted in and a .267 average. He died in 2020 at age 89.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball Almanac · BaseballCardPedia
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 194 | 0 | 4 | 61 | 82 | 22 | 17 | 8 | 0 |
| SGC | 6 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
Graded population — a scarcity guide, not a price. Snapshot 2026-07-09. Half-grades fold down (8.5→8). PSA counts are straight-graded (the +/Q qualifier rows are excluded).
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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1958 Topps Hal W. Smith card?
It is card #257 of the 1958 Topps Baseball set - Topps' sixth flagship issue: 494 cards numbered 1-495 (#145 was never issued), with die-cut player photos on solid-color backgrounds and the first team logos on Topps fronts. It pictures Hal W. Smith, Kansas City Athletics.
How many graded copies of the 1958 Topps Hal W. Smith #257 are there?
PSA has graded 194 copies and SGC 6 as of the 2026-07-09 snapshot. Population is a scarcity guide, not a price - high-grade 1958s are notoriously tough because of the set's chronic centering and print-quality issues.
How many cards are in the 1958 Topps set?
494 issued cards, numbered 1-495 - #145 (Ed Bouchee) was pulled before release and never issued, leaving a permanent gap. The PSA master census counts 534 items: the 494 base cards plus 33 yellow-letter variations, 4 numerical checklist-back team cards, the 'Herrer' #433 error, and 2 unnumbered ad cards.
Sources: PSA CardFacts, Beckett, BaseballCardPedia, Baseball-Reference, PSA & SGC population reports, and hobby press-sheet research (Topps Archives, 2026). Card data compiled and maintained by T206Cards.com. Page last updated 2026-09-30.