1962 Topps #30 Ed Mathews
About Ed Mathews
Card 30 turns up early in the first series with Mathews' 1961 on the back, one of his best years at the plate: a .306 average that matched the career high he set in 1959, 175 hits, 32 home runs, 91 RBI and a league-leading 93 walks. He was a National League All-Star again that summer. Milwaukee slipped to fourth at 83-71, eight games behind Cincinnati, and the pennant races the Braves had owned in the late fifties were starting to pass them by. Topps lists him at third base, where he had played since his rookie year.
Edwin Lee Mathews was born in Texarkana, Texas, raised in Santa Barbara, California, and signed with the Boston Braves for a $6,000 bonus minutes after his 1949 high school graduation. He beat out Bob Elliott for the third-base job in 1952 and hit 25 homers as a 20-year-old rookie. The club moved to Milwaukee in 1953 and he became the new city's first baseball hero, batting .302 with career highs of 47 home runs and 135 RBI; he cleared 30 homers in nine straight seasons. He led the National League in home runs in 1953 and 1959, finished second in the MVP voting both years, was an All-Star in nine seasons and made the cover of the first Sports Illustrated. His tenth-inning homer won Game Four of the 1957 World Series and the Braves took the Yankees in seven. He and Hank Aaron combined for 863 home runs as teammates, the most by any pair in history, and he is the only man to play for the Braves in Boston, Milwaukee and Atlanta. Dealt to Houston after 1966, he became the seventh player to reach 500 home runs, then closed out with the 1968 world champion Tigers, retiring with 512 homers and 2,315 hits. Cooperstown elected him in 1978, on his fifth ballot; he later managed Atlanta.
Sources: SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 1,783 | 0 | 5 | 99 | 399 | 521 | 332 | 426 | 1 |
| SGC | 541 | 0 | 0 | 11 | 71 | 112 | 164 | 177 | 6 |
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 #30 card?
It is card #30 of the 600-card 1962 Topps Baseball set, picturing Ed Mathews of the Milwaukee Braves.
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.