1962 Topps #272 Earl Robinson
About Earl Robinson
Robinson opened 1962 as Baltimore's primary right fielder, starting 11 of the club's first 19 games, but erratic defense and a cold bat cost him the job by mid-May, and a sore throwing elbow later found to be full of bone chips finished it off. On May 13 he led off the ninth against Washington and drove Marty Kutyna's first pitch just inside the left field foul pole for a disputed walk-off homer, the only one he hit all year. Baltimore shipped him to Triple-A Rochester on June 26, leaving him with 29 games and a .286 average. Card #272 comes from the third series. His first Topps card had come in 1961, as an Oriole.
Earl Robinson (1936-2014) was a two-sport star at the University of California, Berkeley, an All-American shortstop in 1957 and a basketball captain who helped the Golden Bears win three straight conference titles. Born in New Orleans and raised in Berkeley, the right-handed-hitting outfielder signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1958 for a $60,000 bonus, which made him the first African American player to receive a bonus contract. He debuted that September and got into eight games, six of them at third base, then spent 1959 and 1960 in Triple-A before the Dodgers sold his contract to the Baltimore Orioles in December 1960. Baltimore gave him his only extended work: across parts of four major league seasons he batted .268 with 12 home runs and 44 RBIs in 170 games, mostly in right field, closing out in 1964 as a left and center field reserve. Robinson then earned a doctorate in education and taught speech and communications for decades at Laney College in Oakland, where Rickey Henderson took his class to prepare a Hall of Fame induction speech. Robinson is in the Cal Athletic Hall of Fame (1988) and the Pac-10 Hall of Honor (2010), not the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac · Retrosheet
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 191 | 2 | 4 | 92 | 73 | 11 | 5 | 4 | 0 |
| SGC | 13 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 1 |
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 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 #272 card?
It is card #272 of the 600-card 1962 Topps Baseball set, picturing Earl Robinson of the Baltimore Orioles.
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 2026-10-05.