1962 Topps #81 Jim Pagliaroni
About Jim Pagliaroni
A first-series card, and the first to show Pagliaroni as a Boston regular. Behind it sits 1961, when he got into 120 games, more than any other Red Sox catcher, and batted .242 with 16 home runs and 58 RBI while splitting the job with Russ Nixon. On June 18, 1961 he hit the first grand slam of his career, a ninth-inning shot that tied a game Boston had trailed by eight runs with two outs; the Red Sox went on to beat the Washington Senators, and he homered again in the second game of the doubleheader.
James Vincent Pagliaroni was born December 8, 1937, in Dearborn, Michigan, and grew up in Long Beach, California, where he starred at Woodrow Wilson High School. The Boston Red Sox signed him in 1955 as an amateur free agent for a reported $85,000 bonus paid out over ten years, and the bonus rules of the day put him straight onto the major-league roster; he debuted at Fenway Park on August 13, 1955, at age seventeen. Army service from 1956 to 1958 and three minor-league seasons followed before he returned to Boston for good in August 1960. A right-handed hitter listed at six-foot-four and 210 pounds, Pagliaroni caught eleven big-league seasons for the Red Sox, Pittsburgh Pirates, Oakland Athletics and Seattle Pilots, batting .252 with 90 home runs and 326 RBI in 849 games and fielding .991 behind the plate. He was on the receiving end of two celebrated games, Bill Monbouquette's 1962 no-hitter and Catfish Hunter's 1968 perfect game, and his teammates elected him players' union representative with both the Pirates and the Athletics. He died of cancer on April 3, 2010, in Grass Valley, California.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 248 | 0 | 7 | 109 | 96 | 22 | 9 | 5 | 0 |
| SGC | 16 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 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 #81 card?
It is card #81 of the 600-card 1962 Topps Baseball set, picturing Jim Pagliaroni of the Boston Red Sox.
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.