1962 Topps #510 Jim Lemon
About Jim Lemon
Card #510 finds Lemon a year into the Minnesota move, and the season behind it explains what happened next. He opened his Twin Cities time with a bitter contract fight with owner Calvin Griffith that played out in the papers, then took an April 24 pitch from Kansas City's Don Larsen that wrecked his shoulder; by midseason he could barely raise and extend his lead arm, and he finished at .258 with 14 home runs and 52 RBIs. The worse news arrived while this card was still in packs, as that same shoulder kept him on the disabled list for nearly all of 1962 and held him to 21 plate appearances before offseason surgery. The card is from the sixth series.
James Robert Lemon was born March 23, 1928 in Covington, Virginia, the third of six children raised by a paper-mill millwright and his wife. Everybody called him Bob until Cleveland signed him out of Covington High School in 1947, and he took the name Jim to avoid confusion with Indians ace Bob Lemon. Two Army years in 1951 and 1952, spent mostly at Fort Meade, Maryland, cost him his swing, and the Indians sold him to the Washington Senators for a reported $20,000 in May 1954. The 6-foot-4 slugger finally won a regular job in 1956 at age 28 and held it through 1960, hitting at least 26 home runs four times and driving in exactly 100 runs in both 1959 and 1960. On August 31, 1956 he hit three straight homers off Whitey Ford with President Eisenhower in the Griffith Stadium stands, joining Joe DiMaggio as the only men to homer three times in that cavernous park. He moved with the franchise to Minnesota in 1961, but a shoulder injury took his power, and he retired after 1963 with 164 home runs and a .262 average. He coached the Twins in two stints, managed Washington in 1968, entered the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame in 1988, and died in 2006.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 223 | 0 | 12 | 100 | 62 | 35 | 8 | 6 | 0 |
| SGC | 13 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 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 #510 card?
It is card #510 of the 600-card 1962 Topps Baseball set, picturing Jim Lemon of the Minnesota Twins.
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.