1962 Topps #187 Gene Conley
Collectors should know the back shortchanges his Braves service: Conley pitched six big-league seasons for that club, 1952 in Boston and 1954 through 1958 in Milwaukee, not five.
Uncorrected error: The back says he spent five years with the Braves (it was six) and played basketball in the "ABL" - Conley's league was the NBA
About Gene Conley
Conley skipped the NBA that winter and played instead for the Washington Tapers of the fledgling American Basketball League, whose season ended early enough to let him take most of a spring training. It showed. He made 33 starts, worked 241.2 innings and went 15-14 with a 3.95 ERA, career highs in both wins and innings. July brought the escapade that still follows his name, when he and Pumpsie Green stepped off a stalled team bus in New York City traffic and the bus pulled away without them. Card 187 is a second-series number, and it comes two ways, one printing with a green tint over the picture and one without. The back's account of his Braves years also runs a season short.
Donald Eugene Conley, born November 10, 1930, in Muskogee, Oklahoma, and raised in Richland, Washington, was a rarity in American sport: the only athlete to win championships in both major-league baseball and the NBA. A 6-foot-8 right-hander, he starred in baseball and basketball at Washington State and signed with the Boston Braves in 1950. He won Eastern League MVP honors at Hartford in 1951 and was named Minor League Player of the Year twice, the first player so honored. He broke in with the Braves in 1952, made All-Star teams in 1954 and 1955, and won a World Series ring with Milwaukee in 1957. A 1959 trade sent him to the Phillies, where another All-Star selection and a Comeback Player of the Year award followed, and he finished with the Boston Red Sox from 1961 through 1963. He closed with a 91-96 record, 888 strikeouts and a 3.82 ERA over eleven seasons. In six NBA seasons, mostly as a Celtics forward, he won three straight titles from 1959 through 1961, later playing for the New York Knicks. He and his wife Katie ran the Foxboro Paper Company in Massachusetts for more than three decades. Named to the Washington Sports Hall of Fame in 1979, Conley died July 4, 2017.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference
Print variations
Two states of #187 are tracked individually: 187a - No Green Tint and 187b - Green Tint. The difference is on the front of the card (green tint).
States catalogued by the PSA master set registry; each is tracked here individually.
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Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 187a - No Green Tint | |||||||||
| PSA | 282 | 0 | 6 | 133 | 103 | 20 | 11 | 9 | 0 |
| SGC | 20 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 9 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| 187b - Green Tint | |||||||||
| PSA | 76 | 0 | 6 | 26 | 30 | 6 | 5 | 3 | 0 |
| SGC | 11 | 0 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 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. Where a grader registers a variation separately its population is listed under that variation. 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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Related cards
Team card: #334 Boston Red Sox Team
More Boston Red Sox cards:
- #3 Pete Runnels
- #35 Don Schwall
- #81 Jim Pagliaroni
- #101 Carroll Hardy
- #117 Gary Geiger
- #153 Pumpsie Green
- #201 Ike Delock
- #225 Frank Malzone
- #244 Don Gile
- #276 Hal Kolstad
- #301 Galen Cisco
- #336 Billy Muffett
- #345 Chuck Schilling
- #368 Bob Tillman
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1962 Topps #187 card?
It is card #187 of the 600-card 1962 Topps Baseball set, picturing Gene Conley of the Boston Red Sox.
Does 1962 Topps #187 have variations?
Yes. Two states are catalogued and tracked separately: 187a - No Green Tint (No green tint - the standard first printing) and 187b - Green Tint (Green tint - the color-shifted second printing of series 2). Owning any one of them fills the #187 slot; the master set counts each state.
Does 1962 Topps #187 have an error?
The back says he spent five years with the Braves (it was six) and played basketball in the "ABL" - Conley's league was the NBA. It was never corrected, so there is no variation to chase - every copy of #187 reads the same way.
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.