1962 Topps #124 Bill Pleis
About Bill Pleis
Card #124 from the 1962 set's second series is the recognized Bill Pleis rookie card, picturing the left-hander with the Minnesota Twins. Two printings exist, one with a green tint and one without, so a complete #124 run takes both. The season behind the card was a stop-and-start affair: Pleis opened 1962 with Vancouver of the Pacific Coast League and was not recalled to Minnesota until June 25. He got into 21 games the rest of the way, four of them starts, and finished 2-5 with three saves and a 4.40 ERA.
William Pleis III was born August 5, 1937, in St. Louis and signed out of Kirkwood High School in 1955 after a late-August tryout camp. Five seasons of minor-league drift followed - Class D Orlando, Triple-A Louisville, stops at Lafayette, Twin Falls, Allentown and Memphis, a summer carrying hod for his uncle's construction company after he refused a demotion, and six months on the military service list - before the left-hander stuck with the Minnesota Twins out of their first spring training. He debuted April 16, 1961, and on April 22 was the winning pitcher in the franchise's first victory at Metropolitan Stadium. A reliever in all but ten of his 190 big-league games, all of them for Minnesota, Pleis finished 21-16 with a 4.07 ERA, 184 strikeouts, 13 saves and one complete game. The Twins traded him to Washington in February 1967 for infielder Ken Hamlin, then bought his contract back that September so he could qualify for his pension. He scouted for nearly 40 years, joining the Houston Astros in 1969 and the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1976, and retired in 2006. He died October 17, 2025, at 88.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference
Print variations
Two states of #124 are tracked individually: 124a - No Green Tint and 124b - Green Tint. The difference is on the front of the card (green tint).
States catalogued by the PSA master set registry; each is tracked here individually.
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Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 124a - No Green Tint | |||||||||
| PSA | 264 | 0 | 4 | 116 | 114 | 23 | 6 | 1 | 0 |
| SGC | 17 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 6 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 124b - Green Tint | |||||||||
| PSA | 62 | 0 | 6 | 21 | 20 | 11 | 3 | 1 | 0 |
| SGC | 4 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
Graded population — a scarcity guide, not a price. Snapshot 2026-09-24. Half-grades fold down (8.5→8), and PSA's qualified grades are counted separately from the straight-grade rows shown here. Where a grader registers a variation separately its population is listed under that variation. Slabs of the three cards printed #139 are joined by description, never by number alone. PSA registers the green tints as a separate set; a tint's population is listed under that state of the card it belongs to.
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Related cards
Team card: #584 Minnesota Twins Team
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- #102 Al Schroll
- #164 Hal Naragon
- #166 Don Lee
- #180 Bob Allison
- #208 Billy Martin
- #222 Jerry Zimmerman
- #230 Camilo Pascual
- #298 Bill Tuttle
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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1962 Topps #124 card?
It is card #124 of the 600-card 1962 Topps Baseball set, picturing Bill Pleis of the Minnesota Twins.
Is 1962 Topps #124 a rookie card?
Yes - #124 is the 1962 Topps rookie card of Bill Pleis.
Does 1962 Topps #124 have variations?
Yes. Two states are catalogued and tracked separately: 124a - No Green Tint (No green tint - the standard first printing) and 124b - Green Tint (Green tint - the color-shifted second printing of series 2). Owning any one of them fills the #124 slot; the master set counts each state.
How many cards are in the 1962 Topps Baseball set?
600 cards, tracked as 708 collectible states. The numbers run from 1 to 598 with no gaps, but three different cards were printed #139 - two Hal Reniff poses, catalogued 139a and 139b, and the Babe Hits 60 Babe Ruth Special, 139c - so 598 numbers make 600 cards; 93 cards carry catalogued print variations, the series-2 green tints among them, that the master set counts separately.
Sources: Baseball Almanac, Trading Card Database, PSA CardFacts, Cardboard Connection, BaseballCardPedia, 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 2026-10-03.