1962 Topps #447 Willie Kirkland
About Willie Kirkland
Number 447 belongs to the sixth print series of Topps' 1962 set, issued while Kirkland was working his second summer as Cleveland's right fielder. The power held up: 21 home runs, tied with Chuck Essegian for second on the club behind Johnny Romano, plus 72 RBI that also ranked second. Everything else fell away. He managed only 84 hits in 419 at-bats for a .200 average, with just nine doubles, and his on-base mark sank to .272. He still started 98 games in right and filled in for a dozen more in center, so the Indians kept running him out there while the bat stayed quiet.
Willie Charles Kirkland, nicknamed Boom Boom, was born February 17, 1934, in Siluria, Alabama, and raised in Detroit. A right fielder and a powerful left-handed hitter, he signed with the New York Giants out of Northwestern High School and piled up home runs in the minors before losing all of 1957 to military service. He broke in with the transplanted San Francisco Giants in 1958, batting cleanup behind Willie Mays in the club's first official West Coast game and collecting a single and an RBI in an 8-0 win over the Dodgers at Seals Stadium on April 15. He held the Giants' regular right-field job through 1960, and then a trade sent him to Cleveland, where he had his best big-league season in 1961. Over nine major-league seasons with the Giants, Indians, Orioles and Senators he batted .240 with 837 hits, 148 home runs and 509 RBI in 1,149 games. His playing days ran longer than that: after a 34-homer year for the Pacific Coast League's Hawaii Islanders in 1967, he spent six seasons with Japan's Hanshin Tigers, adding 126 more home runs across a 20-year professional career.
Sources: Wikipedia · Baseball-Reference
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 200 | 0 | 8 | 88 | 64 | 26 | 12 | 2 | 0 |
| SGC | 5 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 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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- #215 Woody Held
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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1962 Topps #447 card?
It is card #447 of the 600-card 1962 Topps Baseball set, picturing Willie Kirkland of the Cleveland Indians.
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.