1966 Topps #250 Sam Ellis
About Sam Ellis
Card #250 is the only one of his Topps cards to shorten the name on the front to Sam Ellis, and it carries the career year behind it: 22-10, a 3.79 ERA and 183 strikeouts over 263.2 innings for a Reds club that finished 89-73 and fourth in the National League. He was named to the National League All-Star squad that July but never got into the game. It also exists in the Venezuelan parallel of this set, which copies the first 370 cards onto darker, thinner stock that rarely survives in high grade.
Samuel Joseph Ellis was born February 11, 1941, in Youngstown, Ohio, and signed with the Cincinnati Reds as an amateur free agent in 1961 for a $50,000 bonus after a single year of college baseball at Mississippi State. He went 10-3 with a 1.89 ERA for Class A Columbia that first summer, reached Cincinnati on April 14, 1962, and no-hit the Tacoma Giants for Triple-A San Diego on August 14, 1962. His peak came in 1965: 22-10 with a 3.79 ERA, 183 strikeouts, 15 complete games and his only All-Star selection. A sore arm arrived the next season and he never had another winning year, moving on to the California Angels and then the Chicago White Sox. Ellis finished 63-58 with a 4.15 ERA and 677 strikeouts in seven major league seasons, then spent twelve seasons as a big league pitching coach, most famously turning Dave Righetti into a reliever for the 1984 Yankees. He died of cancer on May 13, 2016, in Temple Terrace, Florida, at 75.
Sources: Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac (1) · Baseball Almanac (2) · BaseballCardPedia (1) · BaseballCardPedia (2)
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 180 | 1 | 28 | 92 | 37 | 13 | 4 | 5 | 0 |
| SGC | 5 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
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
Team card: #59 Cincinnati Reds
More Cincinnati Reds cards:
- #12 John Tsitouris
- #30 Pete Rose
- #72 Tony Perez
- #89 Ted Davidson
- #119 Art Shamsky
- #140 Jim Maloney
- #159 Chico Ruiz
- #180 Vada Pinson
- #196 Don Pavletich
- #214 Tommy Harper
- #219 National League 1965 RBI Leaders
- #233 Dom Zanni
- #269 Don Heffner
- #272 Jack Baldschun
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1966 Topps #250 card?
It is card #250 of the 598-card 1966 Topps Baseball set, picturing Sam Ellis of the Cincinnati Reds.
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.