1968 Topps #163 Gene Brabender
About Gene Brabender
Brabender spent his third full season with Baltimore in 1968, working 37 games with 15 starts and finishing 6-7 with a 3.31 ERA as the Orioles continued to contend in the American League. This card, from the set's second print series, shows him with the Orioles; a March 1969 trade sent him to the expansion Seattle Pilots.
Gene Brabender was a big right-handed pitcher out of Black Earth, Wisconsin, who broke in with the Baltimore Orioles in 1966 and helped the club to a World Series championship as a rookie, though he did not appear in that Series. He pitched three seasons in Baltimore, highlighted by a four-hit, 12-strikeout shutout of Cleveland in August 1967, before Baltimore sent him to the expansion Seattle Pilots in a 1969 trade that also included Gordon Lund. He led that lone Seattle season with 13 wins, a mark that stood as an expansion-team record for years afterward. When the Pilots became the Milwaukee Brewers in 1970, Brabender closed out his five-year major league career there before returning home to work the family dairy farm. Brabender died in 1996 at age 55.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 251 | 8 | 65 | 129 | 24 | 7 | 11 | 7 | 0 |
| SGC | 13 | 0 | 5 | 6 | 2 | 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. 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
Team card: #334 Baltimore Orioles
More Baltimore Orioles cards:
- #2 American League 1967 Batting Leaders
- #4 American League 1967 RBI Leaders
- #20 Brooks Robinson
- #42 Larry Haney
- #56 Orioles 1968 Rookie Stars
- #82 Sam Bowens
- #97 Tom Phoebus
- #118 Mark Belanger
- #135 Paul Blair
- #186 Eddie Watt
- #194 Don Buford
- #204 Andy Etchebarren
- #222 Jim Hardin
- #242 Moe Drabowsky
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1968 Topps #163 card?
It is card #163 of the 598-card 1968 Topps Baseball set, picturing Gene Brabender of the Baltimore Orioles.
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.