1962 Topps #23 Norm Larker
About Norm Larker
Card #23 comes out of the first series and places Larker with the Houston Colt .45s, the only club he played a full season for outside Los Angeles. Houston took him with the 23rd pick of the October 1961 expansion draft and handed him the new club's first-base job at once: he batted cleanup in the franchise's first major league game, April 10, 1962 at Colt Stadium, going one-for-four with a run batted in as Houston beat the Cubs 11-2. He played 147 games that year, a career high, and set personal bests with nine home runs and 58 runs scored. He hit .263, led the Colt .45s in doubles with 19 and on-base percentage at .358, and tied for the club lead with 70 walks.
Norm Larker was a left-handed hitting, left-handed throwing first baseman who also worked the corner outfield, and he appeared in 667 major league games across six seasons from 1958 through 1963. Born in Beaver Meadows, Pennsylvania, a hard-coal mining town, he graduated from Hazleton High School and turned pro with the local Hazleton club before the Brooklyn organization brought him into its farm system in 1950. Gil Hodges blocked him at first base for years, so Larker kept hitting in the minors instead, batting over .300 in three straight American Association seasons at St. Paul before finally sticking with the Los Angeles Dodgers as a 27-year-old rookie in 1958. He started 85 games for the 1959 Dodgers, a team that won the National League pennant in a playoff and then the World Series, and he peaked in 1960, taking over first base from an injured Hodges and batting .323 with 142 hits, 26 doubles and 78 runs batted in. That season brought the only All-Star selection of his career. Houston, Milwaukee and San Francisco followed, and after a year in the minors he closed out his playing days with two seasons for the Toei Flyers in Japan's Pacific League. He died in Long Beach, California, in 2007.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 404 | 1 | 32 | 213 | 107 | 33 | 10 | 8 | 0 |
| SGC | 30 | 0 | 6 | 13 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 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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Related cards
More Houston Colt .45's cards:
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- #44 Don Taussig
- #74 Bob Lillis
- #126 Al Cicotte
- #156 Merritt Ranew
- #177 Bobby Shantz
- #204 Johnny Weekly
- #227 Bobby Tiefenauer
- #248 Bob Aspromonte
- #278 Ken Johnson
- #304 Dick Farrell
- #332 Don Buddin
- #354 Roman Mejias
- #373 Al Heist
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1962 Topps #23 card?
It is card #23 of the 600-card 1962 Topps Baseball set, picturing Norm Larker of the Houston Colt .45's.
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.