1961 Topps #177 Don Larsen
About Don Larsen
Card #177 sits in Topps' second 1961 series and shows Larsen in a Kansas City Athletics cap. The Yankees had shipped him west on December 11, 1959, packaging him with Hank Bauer, Norm Siebern and Marv Throneberry in the deal that brought Roger Maris to New York. The season behind this card was a grim one: 1-10 with a 5.38 ERA in 22 games for the 1960 Athletics, and Kansas City sent him back to the minors that July.
Don James Larsen was a 6-foot-4 right-hander from Michigan City, Indiana, who pitched in the majors between 1953 and 1967 for seven different clubs, finishing 81-91 with a 3.78 ERA in 412 games. He came up with the St. Louis Browns in 1953 and stayed with the franchise when it moved east and became the Baltimore Orioles, losing a league-leading 21 games in 1954. A 17-player trade on November 17, 1954, sent him to the New York Yankees, and there, on October 8, 1956, he threw the only perfect game in World Series history, retiring all 27 Brooklyn Dodgers in Game 5 and collecting the World Series MVP and Babe Ruth awards. He won titles with the 1956 and 1958 Yankees. After New York came the Kansas City Athletics, Chicago White Sox, San Francisco Giants, the Houston Colt .45s and Astros, Baltimore a second time, and finally the Chicago Cubs, with a shift from spot starter to full-time reliever along the way. Cooperstown never called, but the perfect game kept him on the writers' ballot for fifteen years, and San Diego's Breitbard Hall of Fame took him in 1964.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 452 | 0 | 13 | 111 | 167 | 81 | 41 | 38 | 1 |
| SGC | 65 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 9 | 14 | 15 | 20 | 2 |
Graded population — a scarcity guide, not a price. Data as of 2026-09-04. PSA counts are straight grades only; PSA half grades (PSA 1.5 among them) and qualified slabs are not included. SGC half grades fold down (8.5→8). Slabs of the two cards printed #463 are joined by description, never by number alone.
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Related cards
Team card: #297 Kansas City Athletics Team
More Kansas City Athletics cards:
- #8 Dick Williams
- #24 Ken Johnson
- #39 Leo Posada
- #57 Marv Throneberry
- #94 Johnny Kucks
- #106 Whitey Herzog
- #119 A's Big Armor
- #143 Russ Snyder
- #197 Dick Hall
- #199 Bob Boyd
- #212 Haywood Sullivan
- #224 Joe Gordon
- #248 Ed Keegan
- #267 Norm Siebern
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1961 Topps #177 card?
It is card #177 of the 587-card 1961 Topps Baseball set, picturing Don Larsen of the Kansas City Athletics.
How many cards are in the 1961 Topps Baseball set?
587 cards, tracked as 596 collectible states. Numbers run from 1 to 589, but #426, #587 and #588 were never issued and two different cards were printed #463 - Jack Fisher and the Milwaukee Braves Team card, catalogued 463b - and eight cards carry catalogued print variations that the master set counts separately.
Sources: Trading Card Database, PSA CardFacts, Cardboard Connection, The Topps Archives, Baseball-Reference, the SABR BioProject and the National Baseball Hall of Fame, PSA & SGC population reports. Card data compiled and maintained by T206Cards.com. Page last updated 2026-10-05.