1962 Topps #497 Ed Bouchee
About Ed Bouchee
Card #497 places Bouchee in the 1962 set's sixth series with the New York Mets, who took him 30th overall from the Cubs in the National League expansion draft of October 10, 1961. He had hit .248 with 12 home runs and 38 RBIs in 112 games for Chicago that summer. He came to camp expecting first base and lost it to Gil Hodges, then batted .161 in 50 games for a 40-120 Mets club, playing his last big-league game that July.
Ed Bouchee was a left-handed first baseman born in Livingston, Montana, whose family moved to Spokane during World War II and who starred in three sports at Lewis and Clark High School. He left Washington State College in June 1952 to sign with the hometown Spokane Indians of the Western International League; while he spent the next two years in the Army, Spokane entered a working agreement with Philadelphia that handed the Phillies his rights. He debuted on September 19, 1956, and his 1957 rookie season, .293 with 17 home runs and 76 RBIs, made him the Sporting News NL Rookie Player of the Year and runner-up in the writers' Rookie of the Year vote. The following January he was arrested in Spokane on indecent-exposure charges involving two young girls; he pleaded guilty, drew three years' probation and treatment at Hartford's Institute for Living, and was reinstated by Commissioner Ford Frick on July 1, 1958, on the condition that he room with Robin Roberts. He hit .285 with 15 home runs in 1959, spent parts of two seasons with the Cubs, and finished with the expansion Mets at .265 with 61 home runs and 290 RBIs in 670 games over seven seasons. He later spent nearly 30 years as a warehouse supervisor for AC Delco in Des Plaines, Illinois.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 216 | 1 | 6 | 87 | 75 | 29 | 9 | 9 | 0 |
| SGC | 18 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 8 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 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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- #7 Frank Thomas
- #26 Chris Cannizzaro
- #29 Casey Stengel
- #85 Gil Hodges
- #94 Jay Hook
- #162 Sammy Drake
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- #256 Elio Chacon
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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1962 Topps #497 card?
It is card #497 of the 600-card 1962 Topps Baseball set, picturing Ed Bouchee of the New York Mets.
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.