1962 Topps #247 Joe Pignatano
About Joe Pignatano
Card No. 247 pictures Pignatano as a San Francisco Giant, and he barely was one. Stuck behind Ed Bailey and Tom Haller and out of favor with manager Alvin Dark, he got into seven games, with one hit in five at-bats, before the Giants sold him to the New York Mets on July 13, 1962. San Francisco won the pennant and lost a seven-game World Series to the Yankees without him, while Pignatano played out the string in 27 games for the 40-120 Mets. The card sits in the third series.
Joe Pignatano was a Brooklyn-born catcher who signed with his hometown Dodgers after a 1948 tryout and spent almost seven years in their farm system, interrupted by two years of military service, before reaching Brooklyn in April 1957. That September he caught the last five innings of the final game played at Ebbets Field. Across six big-league seasons he backed up John Roseboro in Los Angeles, then finished with the Kansas City Athletics, San Francisco Giants and New York Mets. His signature moment came in the 1959 National League playoff against Milwaukee, when his 12th-inning single kept the pennant-winning rally alive, and he earned a ring that fall as the Dodgers beat the White Sox in six games. He batted .234 with 161 hits, 16 home runs and 62 runs batted in over 307 games, and remains the only major leaguer to end his career by hitting into a triple play. He then coached 20 straight seasons - for the Senators under Gil Hodges, the Mets from 1968 through 1981 and the Braves from 1982 through 1984 - working the bullpen for the 1969 champion Mets, where he raised a vegetable garden from a wild tomato plant he found out there.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 182 | 0 | 8 | 84 | 64 | 16 | 4 | 6 | 0 |
| SGC | 11 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 5 | 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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- #319 Mike McCormick
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1962 Topps #247 card?
It is card #247 of the 600-card 1962 Topps Baseball set, picturing Joe Pignatano of the San Francisco Giants.
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.