1962 Topps #241 Johnny Kucks
About Johnny Kucks
Card #241 arrived in the third series of 1962, listing Kucks with the St. Louis Cardinals - a uniform he never wore in a big-league game. Baltimore had bought his contract from Kansas City in October 1961, then dealt him to the Cardinals that December for minor leaguer Ron Kabbes. St. Louis assigned him to its top farm club, Atlanta, where he went 14-7 for the Crackers and helped pitch them to a seven-game Junior World Series title, opening that series with a four-hit 5-1 win over Louisville. Casey Stengel's Mets bought him conditionally that winter, but he did not make their 1963 club and went back to Atlanta, where he threw his final professional pitch. The card is a regular third-series number.
Johnny Kucks was a right-handed sinkerball pitcher, born in Hoboken and raised in Jersey City, New Jersey, where he pitched at William L. Dickinson High School before signing with the New York Yankees in 1952. He won 20 games for Class B Norfolk that summer, spent 1953 and 1954 in the Army, then jumped straight to the Yankees out of spring training in 1955 and went 8-7 as a rookie. His big year was 1956: 18-9 with 12 complete games and three shutouts, plus a place on the American League All-Star team, though he never got into the game. That October he shut out the Brooklyn Dodgers 9-0 at Ebbets Field in Game Seven of the World Series to clinch the title, his sinker producing ground ball after ground ball, and struck out Jackie Robinson to end it. A second ring followed in 1958. In May 1959 the Yankees traded him, Tom Sturdivant and Jerry Lumpe to the Kansas City Athletics for Ralph Terry and Hector Lopez. His sinker flattened in 1960 and that season ended his major-league career at 54-56 with a 4.10 ERA, though he pitched on in the minors into 1963. He later worked as a stockbroker in New Jersey and entered the Hudson County Hall of Fame in 1992. He died in 2013 at 81.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 154 | 2 | 10 | 69 | 52 | 11 | 7 | 3 | 0 |
| SGC | 11 | 0 | 2 | 5 | 4 | 0 | 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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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1962 Topps #241 card?
It is card #241 of the 600-card 1962 Topps Baseball set, picturing Johnny Kucks of the St. Louis Cardinals.
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.