1963 Topps #245 Gil Hodges
About Gil Hodges
The 1963 set gives him two cards. Number 68, 'Friendly Foes,' is a first-series combination card he shares with Duke Snider, listed with the Dodgers beside Snider's name and the Mets beside his own; number 245, from the third series, is his alone. Both follow a 1962 he spent mostly sitting: 54 games, a .252 average, 9 home runs, 17 runs batted in, for a club that finished 40-120. On April 11 he had hit the first home run in Mets history.
Gil Hodges played 18 major league seasons -- one game in 1943, then 1947 through 1963 -- and spent nearly all of them at first base for the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers, in a lineup with Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella and Duke Snider. Born in Princeton, Indiana, the son of a coal miner, he left the Dodgers 11 days after his debut to join the Marines, serving as an anti-aircraft gunner at Tinian and Okinawa and earning a Bronze Star with a combat V. He returned as the outstanding first baseman of the 1950s: eight All-Star selections, 370 home runs, 1,274 runs batted in, a .273 average, four home runs in a single game against the Braves on August 31, 1950, and the first three Gold Gloves ever awarded at his position. He anchored six Dodgers pennant winners, drove in both runs in the seventh game that finally gave Brooklyn a World Series in 1955, and batted .391 when Los Angeles won the 1959 Series. Managing followed: five rebuilding years with the expansion Washington Senators, then the Mets, whom he took to 100 wins and the 1969 championship. He died of a heart attack on April 2, 1972, two days short of his 48th birthday, and entered the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2022.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · National Baseball Hall of Fame
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 689 | 0 | 12 | 235 | 203 | 120 | 67 | 51 | 1 |
| SGC | 151 | 0 | 1 | 11 | 38 | 29 | 32 | 35 | 5 |
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.
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Related cards
More Gil Hodges in this set: #68 Combo
Team card: #473 New York Mets
More New York Mets cards:
- #27 Choo Choo Coleman
- #43 Veteran Masters
- #59 Craig Anderson
- #68 Friendly Foes
- #78 Marv Throneberry
- #93 Galen Cisco
- #107 Jim Hickman
- #111 Al Jackson
- #135 Richie Ashburn
- #174 Larry Burright
- #197 Roger Craig
- #217 Joe Christopher
- #228 1963 Rookie Stars
- #233 Casey Stengel
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1963 Topps #245 card?
It is card #245 of the 576-card 1963 Topps Baseball set, picturing Gil Hodges of the New York Mets.
How many cards are in the 1963 Topps Baseball set?
576 cards, tracked as 583 collectible states. The numbers run from 1 to 576 with no gaps and no number used twice, and seven cards carry a catalogued print variation - three checklists, the two Rookie Stars cards also printed with a "1962" heading, and the #341 Jack Baldschun and #454 Art Fowler print states - that the master set counts separately.
Sources: 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.