1967 Topps #176 Sammy Ellis
About Sammy Ellis
Series-two card #176 follows the sore arm that showed up in 1966 and never really left: a 12-19 record, a 5.29 ERA and a National League-worst 35 home runs allowed. Cincinnati kept handing him the ball anyway, 41 games and 221 innings with 154 strikeouts, the heaviest workload of his career outside the 22-win season. It was the first losing year of a stretch in which he never had another winning one, and this is the last Topps card to list him with the Reds.
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: Wikipedia · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac · BaseballCardPedia
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 233 | 2 | 29 | 118 | 51 | 18 | 11 | 4 | 0 |
| SGC | 5 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 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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Related cards
Team card: #407 Cincinnati Reds
More Cincinnati Reds cards:
- #6 Dick Simpson
- #21 Dave Bristol
- #44 Joe Nuxhall
- #61 Gordy Coleman
- #80 Jim Maloney
- #96 Art Shamsky
- #114 Jack Baldschun
- #120 Floyd Robinson
- #135 Deron Johnson
- #158 Jimmy Coker
- #202 Johnny Edwards
- #222 Reds 1967 Rookie Stars
- #254 Milt Pappas
- #269 Don Nottebart
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1967 Topps #176 card?
It is card #176 of the 609-card 1967 Topps Baseball set, picturing Sammy Ellis of the Cincinnati Reds.
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.