1968 Topps #498 Bill Bryan
About Bill Bryan
The Senators took Bryan from the Yankees in the Rule 5 draft on November 28, 1967, and card 498 in the 1968 set is a sixth-series card, his only card with Washington and his last in the Topps run of the 1960s. He caught 28 games for the Senators and pinch-hit in 12 more, 40 appearances in all, batting .204 with three home runs and eight RBI. His final major league game came on July 23, 1968. He spent 1969 at Triple-A Buffalo, moved to the Philadelphia organization for 1970, and retired after that season.
William Ronald Bryan, a left-handed hitting catcher from Morgan, Georgia, signed with the Kansas City Athletics as an amateur free agent in 1960 and reached the majors barely a year later, debuting on September 12, 1961. A tall backstop at 6-foot-4 and 200 pounds, he spent parts of six seasons with Kansas City, splitting the catching between 1962 and 1964 with Doc Edwards, Charlie Lau and Joe Azcue before taking the regular job. A June 1966 trade sent him to the New York Yankees, where he worked behind Elston Howard and Jake Gibbs, and the Washington Senators took him from New York in the Rule 5 draft after the 1967 season for his final big league year. Over eight seasons and 374 games he hit .216 with 209 hits, 41 home runs and 125 RBI, throwing out 47 base stealers and fielding .984 behind the plate. He died on April 9, 2026 in Opelika, Alabama, at the age of 87.
Sources: Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac (1) · Baseball Almanac (2)
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 208 | 6 | 41 | 107 | 29 | 14 | 5 | 5 | 1 |
| SGC | 13 | 0 | 5 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 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. Slabs of the yellow team-letter #49 and #66 are 1968 Milton Bradley game cards and are not counted here.
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Related cards
More Washington Senators cards:
- #6 American League 1967 Home Run Leaders
- #31 Ed Stroud
- #49 Ed Brinkman
- #66 Casey Cox
- #96 Senators 1968 Rookie Stars
- #116 Ken McMullen
- #131 Frank Bertaina
- #149 Bob Saverine
- #188 Cap Peterson
- #209 Tim Cullen
- #231 Dave Baldwin
- #248 Fred Valentine
- #268 Bob Humphreys
- #291 Dick Lines
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1968 Topps #498 card?
It is card #498 of the 598-card 1968 Topps Baseball set, picturing Bill Bryan of the Washington Senators.
Is 1968 Topps #498 a scarce card?
It is from the sixth print series (cards 458-533). Together with series 7 it forms the #458-598 block that hobby sources price at a modest premium; several catalogs call these cards high numbers outright.
How many cards are in the 1968 Topps Baseball set?
598 cards, tracked as 606 collectible states. The numbers run from 1 to 598 without a gap and no printed number carries two different cards; eight cards - six of the seven checklists, #10 AL Pitching Leaders and #400 Mike McCormick - carry a catalogued print variation that the master set counts separately.
Sources: Trading Card Database, PSA CardFacts, Cardboard Connection, BaseballCardPedia, Baseball Almanac, Beckett, 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 2026-10-13.