1961 Topps #147 Ed Rakow
About Ed Rakow
Card #147 in the 1961 Topps second series is Rakow's only Dodgers card among the Topps sets of the 1960s, and it caught him on his way out of Los Angeles. The organization had moved him from Reno to Green Bay to Montreal to Spokane before 1960 gave him his first taste of the majors: a relief debut at St. Louis on April 22, nine games in all, two of them starts, an 0-1 record and a 7.36 ERA in 22 innings, with a June option back to Spokane in the middle of it. Recalled that September, he closed the year with seven innings against the Cubs. On March 30, 1961, the pitching-rich Dodgers traded him to Kansas City for right-hander Howie Reed and $40,000.
Edward Charles Rakow, born in Pittsburgh on May 30, 1935, was a 5-foot-11 right-hander who pitched parts of seven big-league seasons between 1960 and 1967 for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Kansas City Athletics, Detroit Tigers and Atlanta Braves, finishing 36-47 with a 4.33 ERA, 20 complete games and 484 strikeouts in 761 1/3 innings. His hometown Pirates turned him away from tryouts, judging neither his fastball nor his 178-pound frame big-league material, and he was driving a truck and pitching semipro ball around Pittsburgh when a chance meeting with Brooklyn Dodgers scout Doc Ruppan at a friend's wedding in October 1956 finally got him a contract. He rose fast enough that an International League official compared him to Don Drysdale in 1959, but arm trouble and a deep Los Angeles staff sent him to Kansas City in March 1961, where he became the Athletics' workhorse and chose to pitch through the shoulder and arm pain that shadowed the rest of his career. He retired in 1968, drove trucks for a living, and in 1989 was a player-coach for the West Palm Beach Tropics of the Senior Professional Baseball Association. He died in West Palm Beach on August 26, 2000.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 385 | 1 | 32 | 166 | 109 | 48 | 16 | 13 | 0 |
| SGC | 17 | 0 | 2 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
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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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1961 Topps #147 card?
It is card #147 of the 587-card 1961 Topps Baseball set, picturing Ed Rakow of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
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.