1969 Topps #298 Dave Nicholson
About Dave Nicholson
Nicholson's last Topps card is #298 from the third series of 1969 - a regular middle-series number. It is the oddity of his run: the Royals had bought him from the Braves organization on October 18, 1968, and Topps duly gave him a Kansas City card in the pink team color it introduced that year for the Royals and Expos, but he never played a big-league inning for the club. He spent 1969 pinch-hitting for the Royals' Triple-A team in Omaha, his last professional season, and that makes #298 a card of a major leaguer who was already finished.
David Lawrence Nicholson (1939-2023) was a right-handed-hitting outfielder from St. Louis who signed with the Baltimore Orioles on January 26, 1958, for a bonus that contemporary accounts placed anywhere from $100,000 to $120,000. He announced his power early, batting .298 with 35 home runs for Class C Aberdeen in 1959 under manager Earl Weaver, tying for the Northern League lead. He debuted for Baltimore on May 24, 1960, at age twenty, and went on to play for the Orioles, Chicago White Sox, Houston Astros and Atlanta Braves through 1967. His calling card was towering, infrequent power matched by extreme swing-and-miss: he finished with 573 strikeouts in 1,662 plate appearances, once every 3.4 times he came to the plate. Over 538 games he hit .212 with 61 home runs and 179 RBI. Two more seasons in Triple-A followed before he retired. He died in Carmi, Illinois, in 2023.
Sources: Wikipedia · Baseball-Reference · SABR · Baseball Almanac
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 195 | 2 | 24 | 112 | 34 | 11 | 12 | 0 | 0 |
| SGC | 5 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 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.
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Related cards
More Kansas City Royals cards:
- #29 Dave Morehead
- #49 Royals 1969 Rookie Stars
- #71 Steve Whitaker
- #93 Joe Foy
- #116 Chuck Harrison
- #137 Wally Bunker
- #159 Jerry Adair
- #211 Galen Cisco
- #239 Bob Taylor
- #258 Jackie Hernandez
- #279 Roger Nelson
- #352 Paul Schaal
- #376 Royals 1969 Rookie Stars
- #396 Jim Campanis
Frequently asked questions
What is the 1969 Topps #298 card?
It is card #298 of the 664-card 1969 Topps Baseball set, picturing Dave Nicholson of the Kansas City Royals.
How many cards are in the 1969 Topps Baseball set?
664 cards, tracked as 696 collectible states. Numbers run from 1 to 664 with none skipped and no printed number shared by two cards; 32 cards carry catalogued print variations that the master set counts separately, 23 of them the yellow- and white-letter name pairs of #440-511.
Sources: Trading Card Database, PSA CardFacts, Cardboard Connection, Baseball Almanac, 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.