1962 Topps #29 Casey Stengel
About this card
The set carries nineteen manager cards, including three Hall of Famers: Casey Stengel of the first-year Mets at #29, Walt Alston at #217 and Al Lopez at #286.
About Casey Stengel
Card #29 is a first-series issue from the 1962 Topps managers subset, and the first Topps card to picture Stengel in a New York Mets uniform. His new club was one of two National League expansion teams that spring, bringing the league back to New York City for the first time since 1957. The Mets went 40-120 and finished tenth, 60 and a half games out, and those 120 losses are the most by any major league team of the twentieth century. Fans came anyway: 922,530 of them at the Polo Grounds, sixth-best in the league. Stengel's exasperated question about his own ballclub gave Jimmy Breslin the title of a 1963 best-seller, Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?
Charles Dillon "Casey" Stengel reached the majors as a Brooklyn outfielder on September 17, 1912, and batted .284 over fourteen National League seasons with the Dodgers, Pirates, Phillies, Giants and Braves. His ninth-inning inside-the-park home run won Game One of the 1923 World Series for the Giants, the first World Series homer ever hit in Yankee Stadium, and he homered again in Game Three. Managing came next and went badly for two decades, with the Dodgers from 1934 to 1936 and the Braves from 1938 to 1943, until the Yankees hired him for 1949. New York then won five straight World Series from 1949 through 1953, the only time that has been done, along with ten pennants and seven titles in his twelve seasons. Dismissed shortly after the 1960 World Series loss, he was hired in late 1961 by the expansion New York Mets and managed four last-place clubs before retiring in 1965. His rambling, quotable double-talk became known as Stengelese; the nickname "the Ol' Perfessor" traces instead to 1914, when he helped coach baseball at the University of Mississippi and was designated an assistant professor. The Veterans Committee elected him to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966 as a manager.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · National Baseball Hall of Fame
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 746 | 0 | 9 | 155 | 223 | 178 | 81 | 99 | 1 |
| SGC | 125 | 0 | 4 | 13 | 36 | 29 | 23 | 19 | 1 |
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. 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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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1962 Topps #29 card?
It is card #29 of the 600-card 1962 Topps Baseball set, picturing Casey Stengel of the New York Mets. The set carries nineteen manager cards, including three Hall of Famers: Casey Stengel of the first-year Mets at #29, Walt Alston at #217 and Al Lopez at #286.
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.