1964 Topps #31 Dave Nicholson
About Dave Nicholson
It is a first-series card at #31 - just an easy early-series pull. The season it fronts contained the single most famous swing of Nicholson's life: on May 6, 1964, at Comiskey Park he hit a Moe Drabowsky pitch that reached the 75-foot left-field roof, one of three home runs he hit in that day's doubleheader against Kansas City. The White Sox put the distance at 573 feet; whether the ball cleared the roof on the fly or bounced off the back of it has been argued ever since. The rest of the year was thinner - 97 games, 84 starts in left field, 13 home runs and 126 strikeouts.
David Lawrence Nicholson (1939-2023) was a right-handed-hitting outfielder from St. Louis who signed with the Baltimore Orioles on January 26, 1958, for a bonus that contemporary accounts placed anywhere from $100,000 to $120,000. He announced his power early, batting .298 with 35 home runs for Class C Aberdeen in 1959 under manager Earl Weaver, tying for the Northern League lead. He debuted for Baltimore on May 24, 1960, at age twenty, and went on to play for the Orioles, Chicago White Sox, Houston Astros and Atlanta Braves through 1967. His calling card was towering, infrequent power matched by extreme swing-and-miss: he finished with 573 strikeouts in 1,662 plate appearances, once every 3.4 times he came to the plate. Over 538 games he hit .212 with 61 home runs and 179 RBI. Two more seasons in Triple-A followed before he retired. He died in Carmi, Illinois, in 2023.
Sources: Wikipedia · Baseball-Reference · SABR · Baseball Almanac
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 207 | 1 | 19 | 104 | 53 | 15 | 9 | 6 | 0 |
| SGC | 9 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
Graded population — a scarcity guide, not a price. Data as of 2026-09-04. Half grades fold down for both graders (8.5→8); PSA qualified slabs (OC, ST, PD, MC and the like) are not counted.
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Related cards
Team card: #496 Chicago White Sox
More Chicago White Sox cards:
- #2 1963 American League E.R.A. Leaders
- #13 Hoyt Wilhelm
- #66 Eddie Fisher
- #81 All-Star Vets
- #85 Pete Ward
- #107 White Sox 1964 Rookie Stars
- #130 Gary Peters
- #148 J.C. Martin
- #168 Al Weis
- #195 Floyd Robinson
- #215 Ray Herbert
- #232 Al Lopez
- #247 Dave DeBusschere
- #264 Jim Landis
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1964 Topps #31 card?
It is card #31 of the 587-card 1964 Topps Baseball set, picturing Dave Nicholson of the Chicago White Sox.
How many cards are in the 1964 Topps Baseball set?
587 cards, tracked as 589 collectible states. Numbers run from 1 to 587 with no gaps, and no number carries two different cards; two cards - #4, the A.L. Pitching Leaders, and #517, the seventh-series checklist - carry a catalogued back variation that the master set counts separately.
Sources: Trading Card Database, PSA CardFacts, Cardboard Connection, The Topps Archives, Baseball Almanac, 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 2026-10-11.