1962 Topps #279 Hobie Landrith
The back of this card prints the wrong birth year. Landrith was born in 1930.
Uncorrected error: The back gives the wrong birth year - Landrith was born in 1930
About Hobie Landrith
1962 Topps #279, a third-series card, pictures Landrith with the first-year New York Mets, and its back gets his birth year wrong, since he was born in 1930. He caught the first regular-season game in Mets history April 11, going 0-for-4 in an 11-4 loss to St. Louis, and Stengel soon began cycling through catchers. On May 12 he beat Warren Spahn with a two-run ninth-inning homer. Hitting .289 in 23 games, he went to Baltimore on June 7 as the player to be named in the Marv Throneberry trade.
Hobie Landrith was a left-handed-hitting, right-handed-throwing catcher who spent parts of fourteen big league seasons, from 1950 through 1963, mostly as a second- or third-string receiver. Born in Decatur, Illinois on March 16, 1930, he grew up in Detroit, where his family all but monopolized the catching job at Northwestern High School, and he played a season at Michigan State before Cincinnati signed him. He debuted with the Reds in July 1950 and singled in his first at-bat. Stints with the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals followed, then San Francisco, where 1959 gave him his best year as the Giants' regular catcher. At 5-foot-10 and 170 pounds he was prized less for his bat than for his ceaseless chatter and his handling of pitchers, a habit of constant mound visits he traced to Birdie Tebbetts, his favorite manager in Cincinnati. In October 1961 the expansion New York Mets made him the first player their franchise ever selected, on the reasoning long attributed to Casey Stengel that a club without a catcher spends the day chasing passed balls. He batted .233 with 34 home runs and 203 RBIs in 772 games, coached the Senators in 1964, and died in 2023 at 93.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 220 | 0 | 4 | 82 | 90 | 23 | 11 | 10 | 0 |
| SGC | 8 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 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 #279 card?
It is card #279 of the 600-card 1962 Topps Baseball set, picturing Hobie Landrith of the New York Mets.
Does 1962 Topps #279 have an error?
The back gives the wrong birth year - Landrith was born in 1930. It was never corrected, so there is no variation to chase - every copy of #279 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.