1965 Topps #281 Bill Stafford
About Bill Stafford
He got a starting job back, then could only half keep it. Shoulder tendinitis took him out for stretches of May and September and put him on the disabled list for all of July, and he came out 3-8 with a 3.56 earned run average over 111 innings in 22 games. The Yankees finished sixth; the dynasty was done, and so was his time in the Bronx. Number 281, a fourth-series card, is the last of his five Topps cards from the 1960s and the last to list him with New York. He went to camp with the Yankees in 1966, was optioned to Toledo, and in June was traded to the Kansas City Athletics with Gil Blanco and Roger Repoz for Fred Talbot and Billy Bryan.
Bill Stafford was a right-handed sinkerballer who spent six of his eight big-league seasons with the New York Yankees. The Yankees signed him out of Coxsackie-Athens High School in upstate New York for $4,000 in June 1957, and he debuted at Fenway Park on August 17, 1960, in the middle of a three-team pennant race. He grew into the number three starter behind Whitey Ford and Ralph Terry, and in 1961 he finished 14-9 with a 2.68 earned run average, second in the American League. Then came April 10, 1963, and a sharp pain in his right shoulder that the club called minor; it was an undiagnosed rotator cuff injury, and he was never the same. He pitched on in New York through 1965, went to the Kansas City Athletics in a June 1966 trade, and threw his last major league pitch in September 1967. His record was 43-40 with a 3.52 ERA over 186 games, and he belonged to five Yankee pennant winners and two world champions. He worked afterward in sales, coached at a Connecticut college and at the high school level, and settled in Michigan, where he died of a heart attack in September 2001 at 63.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 282 | 3 | 33 | 143 | 57 | 27 | 13 | 6 | 0 |
| SGC | 13 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 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. 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 #281 card?
It is card #281 of the 598-card 1965 Topps Baseball set, picturing Bill Stafford of the New York Yankees.
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.