1965 Topps #500 Ed Mathews
About Ed Mathews
Card 500 is a sixth-series number and reports the leanest full season of Mathews' career to that point: .233 with 23 home runs and 74 RBI in 141 games, an average that dipped below even his 1952 rookie mark. He was still the regular at third, with a handful of games at first, for a Braves club that finished fifth at 88-74. The ground was shifting underneath it, too: the directors had voted to move the franchise to Atlanta, and the National League ordered one more year in Milwaukee before clearing the move for 1966.
Edwin Lee Mathews was born in Texarkana, Texas, raised in Santa Barbara, California, and signed with the Boston Braves for a $6,000 bonus minutes after his 1949 high school graduation. He beat out Bob Elliott for the third-base job in 1952 and hit 25 homers as a 20-year-old rookie. The club moved to Milwaukee in 1953 and he became the new city's first baseball hero, batting .302 with career highs of 47 home runs and 135 RBI; he cleared 30 homers in nine straight seasons. He led the National League in home runs in 1953 and 1959, finished second in the MVP voting both years, was an All-Star in nine seasons and made the cover of the first Sports Illustrated. His tenth-inning homer won Game Four of the 1957 World Series and the Braves took the Yankees in seven. He and Hank Aaron combined for 863 home runs as teammates, the most by any pair in history, and he is the only man to play for the Braves in Boston, Milwaukee and Atlanta. Dealt to Houston after 1966, he became the seventh player to reach 500 home runs, then closed out with the 1968 world champion Tigers, retiring with 512 homers and 2,315 hits. Cooperstown elected him in 1978, on his fifth ballot; he later managed Atlanta.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac (1) · Baseball Almanac (2) · Baseball Almanac (3) · Baseball Almanac (4)
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 1,243 | 4 | 53 | 293 | 271 | 216 | 167 | 234 | 5 |
| SGC | 350 | 0 | 1 | 16 | 47 | 84 | 85 | 99 | 18 |
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: #426 Milwaukee Braves
More Milwaukee Braves cards:
- #2 National League 1964 Batting Leaders
- #23 Bob Tiefenauer
- #44 Wade Blasingame
- #63 Ty Cline
- #82 Braves 1965 Rookie Stars
- #106 Gene Oliver
- #127 Frank Lary
- #156 Bob Sadowski
- #170 Hank Aaron
- #182 Mike de la Hoz
- #200 Joe Torre
- #223 Dan Osinski
- #241 Mack Jones
- #269 Frank Bolling
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1965 Topps #500 card?
It is card #500 of the 598-card 1965 Topps Baseball set, picturing Ed Mathews of the Milwaukee Braves.
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.