1961 Topps #171 Paul Foytack
About Paul Foytack
Card #171 in the 1961 Topps set belongs to series 2. It shows Foytack with the Detroit Tigers, the only big-league club he had pitched for since his 1953 debut. His first outing of 1961: on April 26 Roger Maris took him deep for the first of the 61 home runs. Foytack settled in from there, going 11-10 with a 3.93 ERA and 89 strikeouts over 169 2/3 innings in 32 games, 20 of them starts, for a Detroit club that won 101 games and still finished second to New York.
Paul Eugene Foytack (born November 16, 1930, in Scranton, Pennsylvania) was a right-handed pitcher who worked 312 major league games for the Detroit Tigers and Los Angeles Angels across 11 seasons between 1953 and 1964. Signed by Detroit as a free agent out of Scranton Technical High School in 1949, he spent four years in the farm system, got a brief trial at the start of 1953, and stuck on the Tigers' staff for good in 1955. From 1956 through 1959 he was one of the American League's workhorses, winning 15, 14, 15 and 14 games while placing among the league's top ten in innings, strikeouts and complete games, and leading the AL with 37 starts in 1959. A 1956 game in which he struck out 15 Washington batters set a Detroit record. A torn shoulder muscle in 1960 cost him his best fastball, and Detroit traded him to the Angels in June 1963. He finished at 86-87 with a 4.14 ERA, 63 complete games, seven shutouts and 827 strikeouts in 1,498 innings, then pitched one season in Japan for the Chunichi Dragons in 1965. Foytack died January 23, 2021, in Spring Hill, Tennessee.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 303 | 0 | 8 | 96 | 128 | 55 | 9 | 7 | 0 |
| SGC | 10 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 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 #171 card?
It is card #171 of the 587-card 1961 Topps Baseball set, picturing Paul Foytack of the Detroit Tigers.
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.