1965 Topps #51 Billy Bryan
About Billy Bryan
Number 51 in the 1965 set is a first-series card, and it landed in the year Bryan made himself a regular. He won the Athletics' opening day catching job and set career bests everywhere: 108 games, 82 hits, 14 home runs, 51 RBI and a .252 average. The season's signature night came on September 25, when Kansas City started 59-year-old Satchel Paige and Bryan caught him. Paige worked three shutout innings on 28 pitches, allowing only a first-inning double to Carl Yastrzemski, and became the oldest player ever to appear in a big league game. Bryan singled home the game's first run behind him and doubled later on.
William Ronald Bryan, a left-handed hitting catcher from Morgan, Georgia, signed with the Kansas City Athletics as an amateur free agent in 1960 and reached the majors barely a year later, debuting on September 12, 1961. A tall backstop at 6-foot-4 and 200 pounds, he spent parts of six seasons with Kansas City, splitting the catching between 1962 and 1964 with Doc Edwards, Charlie Lau and Joe Azcue before taking the regular job. A June 1966 trade sent him to the New York Yankees, where he worked behind Elston Howard and Jake Gibbs, and the Washington Senators took him from New York in the Rule 5 draft after the 1967 season for his final big league year. Over eight seasons and 374 games he hit .216 with 209 hits, 41 home runs and 125 RBI, throwing out 47 base stealers and fielding .984 behind the plate. He died on April 9, 2026 in Opelika, Alabama, at the age of 87.
Sources: Wikipedia · Baseball-Reference · National Baseball Hall of Fame · SABR Games Project · Baseball Almanac (1) · Baseball Almanac (2)
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 310 | 1 | 63 | 156 | 49 | 18 | 15 | 8 | 0 |
| SGC | 22 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 9 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 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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Related cards
Team card: #151 Kansas City Athletics
More Kansas City Athletics cards:
- #35 Ed Charles
- #71 John O'Donoghue
- #87 Nelson Mathews
- #117 Wes Stock
- #168 Dick Green
- #197 Diego Segui
- #219 Bob Meyer
- #239 Doc Edwards
- #266 Bert Campaneris
- #286 Athletics 1965 Rookie Stars
- #311 Orlando Pena
- #333 Tommie Reynolds
- #365 Jim Gentile
- #376 Jim Landis
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1965 Topps #51 card?
It is card #51 of the 598-card 1965 Topps Baseball set, picturing Billy Bryan of the Kansas City Athletics.
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.