1966 Topps #576 Dave Nicholson
About Dave Nicholson
The last of Nicholson's high numbers: #576 sits in the seventh and final series of 1966 Topps, a high number and not a rookie issue. It is the only Topps card that shows him with Houston, and 1966 turned out to be the last full season of his career. He played 100 games for the Astros, most of them in right field, where he made 54 starts, and hit .246 with 10 home runs and 31 RBI - the best full-season average he ever posted. That winter Houston packaged him with pitcher Bob Bruce and sent them to Atlanta for Eddie Mathews, pitcher Arnold Umbach and a player to be named later.
David Lawrence Nicholson (1939-2023) was a right-handed-hitting outfielder from St. Louis who signed with the Baltimore Orioles on January 26, 1958, for a bonus that contemporary accounts placed anywhere from $100,000 to $120,000. He announced his power early, batting .298 with 35 home runs for Class C Aberdeen in 1959 under manager Earl Weaver, tying for the Northern League lead. He debuted for Baltimore on May 24, 1960, at age twenty, and went on to play for the Orioles, Chicago White Sox, Houston Astros and Atlanta Braves through 1967. His calling card was towering, infrequent power matched by extreme swing-and-miss: he finished with 573 strikeouts in 1,662 plate appearances, once every 3.4 times he came to the plate. Over 538 games he hit .212 with 61 home runs and 179 RBI. Two more seasons in Triple-A followed before he retired. He died in Carmi, Illinois, in 2023.
Sources: Wikipedia · Baseball-Reference · SABR · Baseball Almanac
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 259 | 1 | 13 | 104 | 71 | 41 | 16 | 12 | 1 |
| SGC | 17 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 9 | 2 | 1 | 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. Where SGC registers no separate row for a variation state, its slabs of that card are listed under the base state.
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Related cards
More Houston Astros cards:
- #21 Don Nottebart
- #45 Jim Gentile
- #64 Bob Bruce
- #86 John Bateman
- #106 Rusty Staub
- #122 Joe Gaines
- #147 Lum Harris
- #162 Lee Maye
- #174 Ron Taylor
- #195 Joe Morgan
- #228 Larry Dierker
- #244 Astros 1966 Rookie Stars
- #258 Dave Giusti
- #273 Astro Aces
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1966 Topps #576 card?
It is card #576 of the 598-card 1966 Topps Baseball set, picturing Dave Nicholson of the Houston Astros.
Why is #576 harder to find?
It is a high number card from the seventh and last print series, #523-598 - the scarce end of the set. Forty-three of its 76 cards are short prints, so scarcity is stated for the series as a whole.
How many cards are in the 1966 Topps Baseball set?
598 cards, tracked as 613 collectible states. Numbers run from 1 to 598 with no gaps and no number used twice, and 14 cards carry catalogued print variations - five checklists, the trade and sold statement backs, the three-state #43 Don Landrum, three team-card dot pairs and the #161 Jerry Lumpe white streak - that the master set counts separately.
Sources: Trading Card Database, PSA CardFacts, Cardboard Connection, 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.