1961 Topps #442 Gordon Jones
About Gordon Jones
Baltimore had acquired Jones on November 30, 1959, when San Francisco sent him, Jackie Brandt and Roger McCardell east in exchange for pitchers Billy O'Dell and Billy Loes. Wearing number 19 in his second Orioles season, he barely surfaced in 1961: three appearances, five innings, a 5.40 ERA. The team around him won a franchise-record 95 games and still finished third, fourteen behind the champion Yankees. Baltimore sold him to the Kansas City Athletics that November. The card is 1961 Topps #442, printed in the set's fifth series.
Gordon Bassett Jones was a right-handed pitcher born in Portland, Oregon, who went to high school in Sacramento, California. The St. Louis Cardinals signed him as an amateur free agent before the 1949 season, and he reached the majors on August 6, 1954, starting the opener of a doubleheader at Forbes Field. That rookie half-season was the best of his career: 4-4 with a 2.00 ERA, four complete games and two shutouts across ten starts. After 1955 he worked almost entirely in relief, moving on to the New York and San Francisco Giants, the Baltimore Orioles, the Kansas City Athletics and the Houston Colt .45s and Astros. Over eleven big league seasons between 1954 and 1965 he went 15-18 with twelve saves and a 4.16 ERA in 171 games, walking only 120 men in 378.2 innings - control that gave him nearly two strikeouts per walk. He later ran the Astros' pitching staff for all of 1966 and the first three months of 1967, when manager Grady Hatton fired him. Jones died in Lodi, California, in 1994.
Sources: Wikipedia · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac (1) · Baseball Almanac (2)
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 378 | 0 | 37 | 169 | 115 | 40 | 13 | 2 | 2 |
| SGC | 16 | 0 | 2 | 7 | 6 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 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 #442 card?
It is card #442 of the 587-card 1961 Topps Baseball set, picturing Gordon Jones of the Baltimore Orioles.
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.