1961 Topps #279 Jose Pagan
About Jose Pagan
Card #279 sits in the third series, an ordinary middle number. It landed the spring Pagan finally had a job to lose: new manager Alvin Dark handed him shortstop, and he answered with 132 games at the position, 110 hits and a .253 average while San Francisco finished eight games behind pennant-winning Cincinnati. Two seasons of shuttling between the Giants and Triple-A ball were over.
Jose Pagan was a Puerto Rican infielder who played fifteen major league seasons, 1959 to 1973, for the San Francisco Giants, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Philadelphia Phillies. Signed by the New York Giants in 1955 out of the Santurce club in Puerto Rico's winter league, he spent two seasons shuttling to the minors before Alvin Dark made him San Francisco's starting shortstop in 1961. His best year came in 1962, when he played 164 games at short, batted .259 with career highs of 150 hits, 73 runs and 57 RBI, then hit .368 with a home run in a World Series the Giants lost to the Yankees in seven games. Pittsburgh acquired him in a May 1965 trade and turned him into a bench man at third base, shortstop and left field. In Game Seven of the 1971 World Series he doubled home Willie Stargell with the run that decided the championship. He finished at .250 with 922 hits, coached for the Phillies and then the Pirates through 1978, managed in Puerto Rico and the minors, and was later named to the Puerto Rico Sports Hall of Fame. He died in 2011 in Sebring, Florida.
Sources: SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · National Baseball Hall of Fame · Baseball Almanac · Retrosheet
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 249 | 3 | 17 | 116 | 69 | 27 | 9 | 8 | 0 |
| SGC | 11 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 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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Related cards
Team card: #167 San Francisco Giants Team
More San Francisco Giants cards:
- #31 Bob Schmidt
- #55 Jim Davenport
- #72 Stu Miller
- #87 Joe Amalfitano
- #96 Billy O'Dell
- #114 Hobie Landrith
- #150 Willie Mays
- #161 Sherman Jones
- #188 Jim Marshall
- #203 Eddie Bressoud
- #220 Al Dark
- #237 Billy Loes
- #258 Jack Sanford
- #294 Don Blasingame
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1961 Topps #279 card?
It is card #279 of the 587-card 1961 Topps Baseball set, picturing Jose Pagan of the San Francisco Giants.
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.