1968 Topps #49 Ed Brinkman
About Ed Brinkman
Card #49, from the 1968 set's first series, arrives on the back of Brinkman's thinnest year to that point: .188 with one home run and 18 RBI across 109 games, roughly two-thirds of a schedule. The other half of the job is why he still had one. 1967 was the season he led American League shortstops in fielding percentage, the standard by which Washington had always measured him.
Edwin Albert Brinkman grew up in Cincinnati and played at Western Hills High School alongside Pete Rose, and scouts of the day rated Brinkman the better prospect of the two. Courted by 17 clubs, he signed with the Washington Senators in May 1961 for a bonus reported as high as $75,000 spread over five years, the largest the young franchise had handed out, and debuted that September at age 19. A slick-fielding, light-hitting shortstop, he held the Washington job for most of the next decade until a four-for-four trade on October 9, 1970 sent him, Aurelio Rodriguez, Joe Coleman and Jim Hannan to Detroit for Denny McLain, Elliott Maddox, Don Wert and Norm McRae. In 1972 he made only seven errors in 156 games, set American League records with 72 straight errorless games and 331 consecutive chances handled cleanly, won his lone Gold Glove and was voted Tiger of the Year as Detroit took the AL East. His only All-Star selection came in 1973. He closed out in 1975 with the Cardinals, Rangers and Yankees at a .224 career average, then instructed, coached and scouted for Detroit and the White Sox, managing their Double-A Montgomery club in 1977 with Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker up the middle. He died in Cincinnati in 2008.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac (1) · Baseball Almanac (2)
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 617 | 43 | 206 | 257 | 61 | 20 | 18 | 12 | 0 |
| SGC | 30 | 1 | 15 | 9 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 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
- #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
- #320 Frank Howard
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1968 Topps #49 card?
It is card #49 of the 598-card 1968 Topps Baseball set, picturing Ed Brinkman of the Washington Senators.
Is there a yellow-letter version of #49?
Yes, but it is not a Topps variation. The yellow team-letter #49 Ed Brinkman is the 1968 Milton Bradley Win-A-Card game card; PSA and TCDB catalog it anyway, so graded examples exist, but it is a different product and is not tracked as a state here.
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 2026-10-12.