1965 Topps #80 Turk Farrell
The team pennant on the front reads a plain HOUSTON with no nickname, artwork from the season the Colt .45s became the Astros.
About Turk Farrell
Topps printed the name as Turk Farrell on #80, a first-series card. The pennant on the front reads a bare HOUSTON with no nickname at all, the tell that the Colt .45s were turning into the Astros while the card was in production. The 1964 season behind it began like a 20-win year: 10-1 with a 2.41 ERA, the first pitcher in the majors to reach ten wins, and an All-Star trip to Shea Stadium, where he worked two innings in relief. Then the Houston bats quit on him - eight straight starts, eight losses, 12 runs of support - and he came out at 11-10, 3.27.
Richard Joseph "Turk" Farrell was a 6-foot-4 right-hander whose 14 major-league seasons (1956-1969) were all in the National League, with the Philadelphia Phillies, Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston's Colt .45s/Astros. Born in Boston on April 8, 1934, he was stricken with polio before his second birthday, wore a leg brace until he was six and was left with a permanent limp and a left foot an inch and a half shorter than his right. The nickname came from his father Tom, a big man who kept the graves at Holyhood Cemetery in Brookline and was known as Big Turk. Signed by the Phillies out of St. Mary's High School in Brookline in 1953, Farrell threw a fastball hitters dreaded, and with Jack Meyer and Jim Owens he formed Philadelphia's hard-living Dalton Gang. He was picked for the National League All-Star squad in 1958, 1962, 1964 and 1965, twice over in 1962, when the majors staged two All-Star Games. He finished 106-111 with a 3.45 ERA, 83 saves and 1,177 strikeouts in 590 games. Farrell was killed in a car accident in Great Yarmouth, England, on June 10, 1977, at 43, while working as a safety supervisor on North Sea oil rigs; in 2020 he was revealed to be the biological father of big-league pitcher Richard Dotson.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 244 | 6 | 50 | 106 | 50 | 12 | 10 | 10 | 0 |
| SGC | 10 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 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. The two checklist variations, #79 and #508, are listed under the wording PSA uses for each state.
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- #175 Bob Aspromonte
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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1965 Topps #80 card?
It is card #80 of the 598-card 1965 Topps Baseball set, picturing Turk Farrell of the Houston Astros.
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.