1962 Topps #423 Rival League Relief Aces
On this card: Roy Face, Hoyt Wilhelm
A known misprint: the Roy Face text on the back garbles his appearance totals. Face pitched in 68 games in 1960 and in 62 games in 1961.
Uncorrected error: The Roy Face line on the back ("Face in 9th year with Pirates, 68 app. in...") misstates his record - Face made 68 appearances in 1960 and 62 in 1961
About this card
This is one of the eleven combo cards in the set, each pairing two or three players under a headline rather than giving one man his own card - Managers' Dream (#18, Mantle and Mays), AL & NL Homer Kings (#401, Maris and Cepeda) and Rival League Relief Aces (#423, Face and Wilhelm) among them.
The story on this card
The card sets the National League's relief ace beside the American League's. Roy Face, the Pirates' small forkball man, led the NL with 17 saves in 1961; Hoyt Wilhelm, Baltimore's knuckleballer, worked 51 games that season with 18 saves and a 2.30 ERA. Number 423 comes out of the fifth series. Both had been in the majors since the early 1950s. Collectors also know it as an error card, because the Face copy on the back garbles his appearance totals.
Roy Face was Pittsburgh's pioneering forkball reliever, whose 18-1 season in 1959 produced the highest single-season winning percentage in major league history; he closed out three games in the 1960 World Series and retired with 193 saves. A self-taught knuckleball carried Hoyt Wilhelm from a Purple Heart and a late major-league start at 29 to 21 seasons, two ERA titles, 227 saves and a place as the first relief pitcher in Cooperstown.
Sources: Wikipedia (Roy Face) · Wikipedia (Hoyt Wilhelm) · SABR BioProject (Roy Face) · SABR BioProject (Hoyt Wilhelm)
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 271 | 0 | 14 | 89 | 92 | 38 | 20 | 16 | 2 |
| SGC | 41 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 15 | 7 | 3 | 9 | 1 |
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 #423 card?
It is card #423 of the 600-card 1962 Topps Baseball set, picturing Roy Face and Hoyt Wilhelm. This is one of the eleven combo cards in the set, each pairing two or three players under a headline rather than giving one man his own card - Managers' Dream (#18, Mantle and Mays), AL & NL Homer Kings (#401, Maris and Cepeda) and Rival League Relief Aces (#423, Face and Wilhelm) among them.
Does 1962 Topps #423 have an error?
The Roy Face line on the back ("Face in 9th year with Pirates, 68 app. in...") misstates his record - Face made 68 appearances in 1960 and 62 in 1961. It was never corrected, so there is no variation to chase - every copy of #423 reads the same way.
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.