1962 Topps #568 Jim Golden
About Jim Golden
1962 Topps #568, series 7, Houston Colt .45's, is a high number. Houston had taken Golden with the 37th and final pick of the $50,000 round in the National League expansion draft of October 10, 1961, after Los Angeles left him unprotected. He gave them the best season of his career: 37 appearances, 18 of them starts, 7-11 with a 4.07 ERA, and the only five complete games and two shutouts he would ever record. One of the shutouts, on June 15, was a five-hit 2-0 win over his old Dodgers and Don Drysdale, that year's Cy Young winner. A week later he went the distance in a 16-3 win over the Mets and hit two triples himself, still the most recent pitcher to do that in a big-league game.
James Edward Golden, born March 20, 1936, in Eldon, Missouri, and raised from the early 1940s in Valencia, Kansas, was a right-handed pitcher who batted left-handed. He won 11 varsity letters in baseball, football and basketball at Silver Lake High School, helped the baseball team to Kansas state titles in 1953 and 1954, and struck out a state-record 185 batters in that second season. He signed with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1954 for a $7,000 bonus and spent five seasons in their farm system without reaching the majors. In December 1958 the Phillies packaged him with two other players to the Los Angeles Dodgers in exchange for Sparky Anderson, then a second-base prospect and later a Hall of Fame manager. At Triple-A St. Paul in 1960 he won 20 games and led the American Association in both wins and earned run average at 2.32, earning a September 30 debut that he won. He relieved for the 1961 Dodgers, was taken by the expansion Houston Colt .45s, and was finished in the majors by a right shoulder injury in 1963, going 9-13 with a 4.54 ERA over 69 games. The Shawnee County Baseball Hall of Fame in Kansas inducted him in 2014.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 298 | 0 | 22 | 158 | 82 | 24 | 9 | 2 | 1 |
| SGC | 39 | 0 | 4 | 19 | 11 | 1 | 4 | 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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Related cards
More Houston Colt .45's cards:
- #12 Harry Craft
- #23 Norm Larker
- #44 Don Taussig
- #74 Bob Lillis
- #126 Al Cicotte
- #156 Merritt Ranew
- #177 Bobby Shantz
- #204 Johnny Weekly
- #227 Bobby Tiefenauer
- #248 Bob Aspromonte
- #278 Ken Johnson
- #304 Dick Farrell
- #332 Don Buddin
- #354 Roman Mejias
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1962 Topps #568 card?
It is card #568 of the 600-card 1962 Topps Baseball set, picturing Jim Golden of the Houston Colt .45's.
Why is #568 harder to find?
It is a high number card (cards 523-598) from the seventh print series, distributed last and in the smallest quantity - the toughest cards in the set and home to all 42 short prints and the Rookie Parade.
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.