1964 Topps #255 Lee Thomas
About Lee Thomas
Thomas was still an Angel when the 1964 season opened, his fourth year with the club, and he was hitting .273 through 47 games when Los Angeles traded him to the Boston Red Sox for outfielder Lou Clinton on June 4. He told reporters the Angels had made a mistake, then went 14-for-29 over his first seven games in Boston. The two halves added up to a .262 season with 15 home runs and 66 runs batted in. Card 255 still carries his Angels listing, the club he opened the season with. It belongs to series three.
Lee Thomas, born James Leroy Thomas in Peoria, Illinois, in 1936 and raised in St. Louis, spent seven seasons in the New York Yankees' minor league system before reaching the majors in 1961. Dealt to the expansion Los Angeles Angels a month into that season, he had a strong rookie year and delivered one of the great single-day performances in the game's history on September 5, going 9-for-11 across a doubleheader at Kansas City and hitting three home runs, one of them a grand slam, with eight runs batted in during the nightcap. His finest full season came in 1962, when he made the American League All-Star team while setting career highs in average, home runs, and runs batted in. Six more years followed with the Angels, Red Sox, Braves, Cubs, and Astros, then a season in Japan with the Nankai Hawks. He built a far longer front-office career after that, running player development for the St. Louis Cardinals through their 1982 World Series title and then serving as general manager of the Philadelphia Phillies from 1988 to 1997, where he assembled the club's 1993 pennant winner and was named The Sporting News Major League Executive of the Year. He died in St. Louis in 2022.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac (1) · Baseball Almanac (2)
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 250 | 0 | 23 | 130 | 53 | 33 | 7 | 4 | 0 |
| SGC | 8 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 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: #213 Los Angeles Angels
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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1964 Topps #255 card?
It is card #255 of the 587-card 1964 Topps Baseball set, picturing Lee Thomas of the Los Angeles Angels.
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.