1967 Topps #171 Calvin Koonce
About Calvin Koonce
Card 171 sits in the 1967 set's second series, one more Cubs portrait. Its back covers 1966, Leo Durocher's first year in Chicago and the season that turned Koonce into a reliever: five starts, 40 relief outings, two saves and a 5-5 record with a 3.81 ERA in 108 2/3 innings. His 45 appearances trailed only Fergie Jenkins on the staff. A poor start to the year cost him several weeks at Triple-A Tacoma, where he went 5-3 in eight starts before Chicago called him back. Koonce later said Durocher rode a hot arm until it gave out; he once warmed up in the bullpen 14 days in a row. He never started more than eight games in a season again.
Calvin Lee Koonce, a right-handed pitcher born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on November 18, 1940, grew up in Hope Mills and played baseball and basketball at Campbell College, then a two-year school, where he earned junior college All-American honors in 1961. The Cubs signed him that May, and he reached Chicago in April 1962. Over parts of ten seasons with the Cubs, New York Mets and Boston Red Sox through 1971 he went 47-49 with a 3.78 ERA, 504 strikeouts and 24 saves in 334 games, 90 of them starts, moving from the rotation to the bullpen as he went. His best year came in 1968 with the Mets, and he was a reliable relief arm on the 1969 World Series champions under Gil Hodges. A Campbell man like Gaylord Perry, Koonce admitted while still active that he loaded an occasional pitch with perspiration. He later coached seven seasons at his alma mater, Campbell University, retiring in 1986 as its winningest baseball coach at 174-123 and as Big South Coach of the Year, and he was inducted into the Campbell Sports Hall of Fame in 1987. He scouted for the Texas Rangers, ran the minor league Fayetteville Generals, and died of lymphoma on October 28, 1993, at 52.
Sources: SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 264 | 9 | 35 | 128 | 55 | 26 | 5 | 6 | 0 |
| SGC | 11 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 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. PSA registers a row for every one of the 624 states; SGC lists no separate row for the #149 white-streak state.
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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1967 Topps #171 card?
It is card #171 of the 609-card 1967 Topps Baseball set, picturing Calvin Koonce of the Chicago Cubs.
How many cards are in the 1967 Topps Baseball set?
609 cards, tracked as 624 collectible states. Numbers run from 1 to 609 without a gap - no number was skipped and none was used twice - and 15 cards carry catalogued print variations that the master set counts separately.
Sources: Trading Card Database, PSA CardFacts, Cardboard Connection, Baseball Almanac, BaseballCardPedia, 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 2026-10-12.