1961 Topps #2 Roger Maris
About Roger Maris
Topps put Maris at #2 in its opening series; the season behind the card brought .283, 39 home runs, a league-best 112 RBI and a Gold Glove in right field as the Yankees took the pennant. Card #44, the A.L. Home Run Leaders card in Topps' first-ever League Leaders run, lines him up with Mickey Mantle, Jim Lemon and Rocky Colavito after Mantle edged him 40-39 for the 1960 title. Card #478 salutes the MVP award in the Most Valuable Players subset and falls in the sixth series. Card #576, his Sporting News All-Star, sits in the seventh series - a genuine high number and the scarcest of his four cards here.
Roger Maris broke in with the Cleveland Indians in April 1957, moved to the Kansas City Athletics in a June 1958 trade, and joined the Yankees in a seven-player deal on December 11, 1959. In 1960 he hit .283 with 39 home runs and led the American League in RBI with 112 and in slugging at .581, taking a Gold Glove in right field and the first of two straight Most Valuable Player awards. The next season he ran down Babe Ruth's single-season home run record, finishing 1961 with 61 homers, a league-best 141 RBI and a major-league-best 132 runs in the first American League year of a 162-game schedule. Commissioner Ford Frick wanted the mark listed apart unless it came inside 154 games; no asterisk was ever printed, and committees in 1968 and 1991 affirmed it. An All-Star every year from 1959 through 1962, he won World Series titles with the Yankees in 1961 and 1962, went to the St. Louis Cardinals for Charley Smith in December 1966, won a third in 1967, and retired after 1968 with 275 home runs. The Yankees retired his number 9 in 1984. Diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 1983, he died on December 14, 1985, at 51, and is not in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
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 | 5,440 | 1 | 24 | 313 | 603 | 964 | 1,039 | 2,475 | 21 |
| SGC | 1,981 | 0 | 1 | 16 | 91 | 201 | 500 | 1,109 | 63 |
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 Roger Maris in this set: #44 League Leaders, #478 MVP, #576 Sporting News All-Stars
Team card: #228 New York Yankees Team
More New York Yankees cards:
- #19 Cletis Boyer
- #28 Hector Lopez
- #40 Bob Turley
- #68 Deron Johnson
- #104 John Blanchard
- #116 Joe DeMaestri
- #133 Ralph Houk
- #142 Luis Arroyo
- #160 Whitey Ford
- #180 Bobby Richardson
- #213 Bill Stafford
- #252 Bill Short
- #265 Tony Kubek
- #300 Mickey Mantle
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1961 Topps #2 card?
It is card #2 of the 587-card 1961 Topps Baseball set, picturing Roger Maris of the New York Yankees.
What are the key cards in the 1961 Topps set?
The #300 Mickey Mantle is the grail of the set. The other major keys are #2 Roger Maris, #150 Willie Mays, #415 Hank Aaron, #344 Sandy Koufax, #388 Bob Clemente (printed "Bob" on the front), #287 Carl Yastrzemski (his second-year card), the #35 Ron Santo, #141 Billy Williams and #417 Juan Marichal rookie cards - all three Hall of Famers - and three more Mantle and Mays cards: #475 Mickey Mantle and #482 Willie Mays from the MVP subset and #578 Mickey Mantle from the Sporting News All-Stars. The 22 Sporting News All-Stars (#566-586 and #589) belong to the scarce seventh and last series (#523-589).
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.