1962 Topps #488 Hal Brown
About Hal Brown
Card #488 lands in the sixth series, and it is the final Topps card to picture Brown in an Orioles uniform. It catches a pitcher coming off his best stretch: over July and August 1961 he ran off 36 straight scoreless innings, three of them shutouts, one a two-hour whitewash of the Yankees, and he finished that year with a career-high 166 2/3 innings and a raise to $32,000, the most he ever earned in baseball. The 1962 season this card belongs to was a different story - Paul Richards had left for Houston, the young arms went backward, Brown's ERA swelled to 4.10 and he failed to finish any of his 11 starts.
Hector Harold Brown grew up in Pomona, a cotton-mill section of Greensboro, North Carolina, one of eight children in a family where everybody had a nickname; his was Skinny, hung on him as a chubby baby and never shaken. A hard-hitting high school and American Legion shortstop, he drew the eye of North Carolina coach and part-time Red Sox scout Bunn Hearn, then spent a single semester at Chapel Hill before enlisting in the Army Air Forces in 1943. He served as a bomber gunner based in England and bailed out into the English Channel at 19 after his plane took heavy fire on a raid against German submarine bases in France. Discharged in December 1945, he signed with Boston for a $1,750 bonus, was moved to the mound at Class B Roanoke when the club ran short of pitchers, and climbed the farm system with a knuckleball he did not fully trust until his thirties. Paul Richards, who managed him at Seattle in 1950, kept reclaiming him: the White Sox in 1951, the Orioles in 1955, the Colt .45s in 1963. Brown pitched 14 big-league seasons for five clubs, finished 85-92 with a 3.81 ERA, twice led the American League in fewest walks per nine innings, and was elected to the Orioles Hall of Fame in 1991.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 216 | 0 | 17 | 96 | 58 | 29 | 9 | 6 | 1 |
| SGC | 11 | 0 | 3 | 6 | 1 | 1 | 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. 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 #488 card?
It is card #488 of the 600-card 1962 Topps Baseball set, picturing Hal Brown 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 2026-10-03.