1962 Topps #41 Cliff Cook
About Cliff Cook
Cook opened 1962 on the Cincinnati roster wearing number 15, and card 41 from the first series still lists him with the Reds - a standard number. The team line was stale within weeks: on May 7, 1962, Cincinnati sent Cook and left-handed pitcher Bob Miller to the New York Mets for veteran infielder Don Zimmer. He landed on a 40-120 expansion club managed by Casey Stengel, took over at third base, and hit .232 in 40 games before chronic back trouble shut him down by mid-July.
Raymond Clifford Cook, a right-handed hitting third baseman who also saw time in the outfield and at first base, was born August 20, 1936, in Dallas, Texas, and attended Sunset High School there. He signed with Cincinnati as an amateur free agent in 1955 and built a reputation in the minor leagues as a genuine power hitter, clearing 30 home runs with 100 RBI in a season three separate times on the way to 195 minor league homers. His major league debut came September 9, 1959, with the Reds, and the next day he went 6-for-9 with a double, a triple and four RBI in a doubleheader against the Cubs at Wrigley Field, part of a .381 nine-game trial. He could never sustain that success in the big leagues, hitting .208 in 1960 and spending most of 1961 in Triple-A, where he was voted Most Valuable Player of the American Association. Traded to the expansion New York Mets in May 1962, he closed out a five-season, 163-game career in 1963 with a .201 average, seven home runs and 35 RBI, hampered by chronic back trouble. He played a final minor league season in 1964 and later ran a sporting goods shop in Fort Worth, Texas.
Sources: Wikipedia · Baseball-Reference
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 292 | 0 | 9 | 139 | 110 | 16 | 11 | 7 | 0 |
| SGC | 17 | 0 | 1 | 9 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 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. 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 #41 card?
It is card #41 of the 600-card 1962 Topps Baseball set, picturing Cliff Cook of the Cincinnati Reds.
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.