1961 Topps #30 Nellie Fox
About Nellie Fox
1961 Topps carries Fox three times, all with the Chicago White Sox. Card #30 is a first-series base card; his first card had come a decade earlier, in 1951 Bowman. Card #477, a sixth-series card in the MVP subset, replays 1959, when he became the first White Sox player to win the Most Valuable Player Award. Card #570 is a high number from the Sporting News All-Star subset, issued off a 1960 season in which he took his third Gold Glove. The season itself was harder: at 33 he hit .251 in 159 games as Chicago slid to fourth, though he was named an American League All-Star for the eleventh straight year.
Jacob Nelson "Nellie" Fox (1927-1975) was the slick-fielding second baseman at the heart of the Chicago White Sox's "Go-Go" era. Born on Christmas Day in St. Thomas, Pennsylvania, the son of a carpenter who played town ball, Fox signed with the Philadelphia Athletics at sixteen in 1944 and came to Chicago after the 1949 season in a trade for catcher Joe Tipton. Listed at 5-foot-9 and 150 pounds, he choked up on a thick-handled bottle bat and struck out just 216 times in his career, the third-hardest man to fan in major-league history. He led AL second basemen in fielding average six times and won three Gold Gloves. His signature year was 1959: he batted .306, led the league in singles and games played, and was named AL Most Valuable Player, the first White Sox player to win it, as Chicago took its first pennant in forty years. He hit .375 in that fall's six-game World Series loss to the Dodgers. A twelve-time All-Star across fourteen seasons in Chicago, Fox closed out with Houston in 1964-65 and finished at .288 with 2,663 hits and a .984 fielding percentage. The White Sox retired his No. 2, and the Veterans Committee elected him to the Hall of Fame in 1997, twenty-two years after his death from cancer at 47.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac (1) · Baseball Almanac (2)
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 905 | 0 | 34 | 239 | 266 | 182 | 93 | 89 | 2 |
| SGC | 169 | 0 | 1 | 28 | 31 | 37 | 34 | 34 | 4 |
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
More Nellie Fox in this set: #477 MVP, #570 Sporting News All-Stars
Team card: #7 Chicago White Sox Team
More Chicago White Sox cards:
- #56 Russ Kemmerer
- #79 Joe Ginsberg
- #90 Jerry Staley
- #124 J.C. Martin
- #132 Al Lopez
- #152 Earl Torgeson
- #157 Cal McLish
- #170 Al Smith
- #185 Herb Score
- #205 Bill Pierce
- #227 Juan Pizarro
- #247 Billy Goodman
- #271 Jim Landis
- #285 Sherm Lollar
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1961 Topps #30 card?
It is card #30 of the 587-card 1961 Topps Baseball set, picturing Nellie Fox of the Chicago White Sox.
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.