1969 Topps #285 Don Mincher
About Don Mincher
Seattle spent its first pick of the October 15, 1968 expansion draft, the second choice overall, on Mincher, and he answered by batting cleanup and playing first base in the Pilots' first game and then leading the club with 25 home runs. He hit .246 in 140 games with 78 RBIs, two shy of Tommy Davis for the team lead, and drew 78 walks. Named to the American League All-Star team as the replacement for injured teammate Mike Hegan, he pinch-hit for Denny McLain in the fourth inning, the only man ever to take the field in an All-Star Game as a Pilot. Card #285, a third-series number, preserves him in Seattle's lone season.
Don Mincher was a left-handed-hitting first baseman from Huntsville, Alabama, who played in the majors from 1960 through 1972. Signed by the Chicago White Sox out of high school, he was sent to the Washington Senators in April 1960 along with Earl Battey and $150,000 for Roy Sievers, then moved with the franchise to Minneapolis-St. Paul when it became the Minnesota Twins in 1961. He settled in as the Twins' regular first baseman by the mid-1960s, helped the club to the 1965 American League pennant, and homered off Don Drysdale in his first World Series at-bat. Traded to the California Angels after 1966, he made the All-Star team in 1967. Seattle took him with its first selection in the October 1968 expansion draft, second overall, and he led the one-and-only Pilots in home runs before later trades carried him to Oakland, to the expansion Washington Senators and Texas Rangers, and back to Oakland, where he earned a World Series ring in 1972. He retired with exactly 200 home runs, 643 RBIs and a .249 average over 13 seasons, then spent decades as a minor league executive in his hometown and was elected to the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame 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 | 233 | 1 | 37 | 137 | 34 | 13 | 6 | 5 | 0 |
| SGC | 3 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 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
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- #42 Tommy Harper
- #62 Chico Salmon
- #83 Mike Ferraro
- #111 Johnny Morris
- #135 Tommy Davis
- #178 Ray Oyler
- #209 Larry Haney
- #233 Steve Barber
- #254 Joe Schultz
- #301 Darrell Brandon
- #322 Jose Vidal
- #346 Wayne Comer
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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1969 Topps #285 card?
It is card #285 of the 664-card 1969 Topps Baseball set, picturing Don Mincher of the Seattle Pilots.
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.