1962 Topps #304 Dick Farrell
About Dick Farrell
Farrell's first Houston card sits in the fourth series, ordinary mid-set territory. Los Angeles left him unprotected after one bad year, and the Colt .45s spent the 40th pick of the 1961 expansion draft on him in its premium phase, a $125,000 claim by general manager Paul Richards, who had wanted him for years. The 1961 line Topps had to print is the ugly one: 2-1 in five games for the Phillies, then 6-6 with 10 saves and a 5.06 ERA in 50 outings for a Dodger club that finished four games behind Cincinnati. Houston gave him a rotation spot anyway, his first steady starting work in the majors.
Richard Joseph "Turk" Farrell was a 6-foot-4 right-hander whose 14 major-league seasons (1956-1969) were all in the National League, with the Philadelphia Phillies, Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston's Colt .45s/Astros. Born in Boston on April 8, 1934, he was stricken with polio before his second birthday, wore a leg brace until he was six and was left with a permanent limp and a left foot an inch and a half shorter than his right. The nickname came from his father Tom, a big man who kept the graves at Holyhood Cemetery in Brookline and was known as Big Turk. Signed by the Phillies out of St. Mary's High School in Brookline in 1953, Farrell threw a fastball hitters dreaded, and with Jack Meyer and Jim Owens he formed Philadelphia's hard-living Dalton Gang. He was picked for the National League All-Star squad in 1958, 1962, 1964 and 1965, twice over in 1962, when the majors staged two All-Star Games. He finished 106-111 with a 3.45 ERA, 83 saves and 1,177 strikeouts in 590 games. Farrell was killed in a car accident in Great Yarmouth, England, on June 10, 1977, at 43, while working as a safety supervisor on North Sea oil rigs; in 2020 he was revealed to be the biological father of big-league pitcher Richard Dotson.
Sources: SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 168 | 0 | 6 | 66 | 65 | 20 | 3 | 6 | 2 |
| SGC | 12 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 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. 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 #304 card?
It is card #304 of the 600-card 1962 Topps Baseball set, picturing Dick Farrell of the Houston Colt .45's.
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.