1962 Topps #154 Lee Thomas
About Lee Thomas
Shifted to first base in his second season, Thomas gave the Angels the best year of his career in 1962, batting .290 with career highs of 26 home runs and 104 runs batted in. He and Leon Wagner became the first Angels to drive in 100 runs in a season, and Thomas finished eleventh in Most Valuable Player voting. It was his only All-Star season, and because the majors staged two Midsummer Classics that summer he made both squads, pinch-hitting for Jim Bunning in the July 10 game at Washington and playing the last two innings in left field on July 30 at Wrigley Field. Card 154 is a series-two card; collectors chase it in two states, with and without the green tint.
Lee Thomas, born James Leroy Thomas in Peoria, Illinois, in 1936 and raised in St. Louis, spent seven seasons in the New York Yankees' minor league system before reaching the majors in 1961. Dealt to the expansion Los Angeles Angels a month into that season, he had a strong rookie year and delivered one of the great single-day performances in the game's history on September 5, going 9-for-11 across a doubleheader at Kansas City and hitting three home runs, one of them a grand slam, with eight runs batted in during the nightcap. His finest full season came in 1962, when he made the American League All-Star team while setting career highs in average, home runs, and runs batted in. Six more years followed with the Angels, Red Sox, Braves, Cubs, and Astros, then a season in Japan with the Nankai Hawks. He built a far longer front-office career after that, running player development for the St. Louis Cardinals through their 1982 World Series title and then serving as general manager of the Philadelphia Phillies from 1988 to 1997, where he assembled the club's 1993 pennant winner and was named The Sporting News Major League Executive of the Year. He died in St. Louis in 2022.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference
Print variations
Two states of #154 are tracked individually: 154a - No Green Tint and 154b - Green Tint. The difference is on the front of the card (green tint).
States catalogued by the PSA master set registry; each is tracked here individually.
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Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 154a - No Green Tint | |||||||||
| PSA | 264 | 0 | 1 | 89 | 117 | 37 | 10 | 10 | 0 |
| SGC | 20 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 11 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| 154b - Green Tint | |||||||||
| PSA | 58 | 0 | 6 | 18 | 19 | 9 | 1 | 5 | 0 |
| SGC | 5 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 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. Where a grader registers a variation separately its population is listed under that variation. 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
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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1962 Topps #154 card?
It is card #154 of the 600-card 1962 Topps Baseball set, picturing Lee Thomas of the Los Angeles Angels.
Does 1962 Topps #154 have variations?
Yes. Two states are catalogued and tracked separately: 154a - No Green Tint (No green tint - the standard first printing) and 154b - Green Tint (Green tint - the color-shifted second printing of series 2). Owning any one of them fills the #154 slot; the master set counts each state.
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.