1965 Topps #381 Al Jackson
About Al Jackson
Card 381 sits in the fifth series - it is his last Topps card as a Met until 1968. In 1965 he went 8-20 with a 4.34 ERA, an eerie echo of his 1962 line and the reason he remains the only Met to lose 20 games in a season twice. He was better than the record: 31 starts, 205 innings, three shutouts and a club-leading 120 strikeouts. On July 21 at Forbes Field he came within five outs of a no-hitter before Willie Stargell singled, settling for a two-hit 1-0 win. That October the Mets sent him and Charley Smith to St. Louis for Ken Boyer.
Alvin Neill Jackson, born December 26, 1935 in Waco, Texas, was a 5-foot-10 left-hander who pitched ten major league seasons between 1959 and 1969 for the Pittsburgh Pirates, New York Mets, St. Louis Cardinals and Cincinnati Reds. The 13th of 13 children, he attended Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, and signed with Pittsburgh in 1955, but the Pirates used him in only 11 games across 1959 and 1961 and left him unprotected for the National League expansion draft of October 1961. The Mets took him 22nd overall, and he became the young franchise's most durable starter; his 43 Mets wins stood as the club record until Tom Seaver passed the mark in 1969. Two seasons in St. Louis brought the best pitching of his life and a World Series ring, after which he returned to New York. He finished 67-99 with a 3.98 ERA, 54 complete games, 14 shutouts and 738 strikeouts. Jackson later coached for the Boston Red Sox, Baltimore Orioles and Mets and spent decades as a Mets minor league pitching instructor. He died in 2019 at 83 and was honored posthumously in 2021 with the Mets Hall of Fame Achievement Award.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Retrosheet
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 263 | 0 | 37 | 139 | 49 | 18 | 14 | 6 | 0 |
| SGC | 15 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 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. The two checklist variations, #79 and #508, are listed under the wording PSA uses for each state.
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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1965 Topps #381 card?
It is card #381 of the 598-card 1965 Topps Baseball set, picturing Al Jackson of the New York Mets.
How many cards are in the 1965 Topps Baseball set?
598 cards, tracked as 600 collectible states. Numbers run from 1 to 598 with no gaps and no printed-number collisions, and two checklist cards - #79 and #508 - carry catalogued print variations that the master set counts separately.
Sources: Trading Card Database, PSA CardFacts, Cardboard Connection, BaseballCardPedia, 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.