1969 Topps #381 Ed Kranepool
About Ed Kranepool
#381 is a fourth-series base card, and it catches Kranepool at a low ebb: .231 in 1968 with 86 hits, three home runs and 20 RBI across 127 games. He was still the club's regular first baseman, and the Mets around him went 73-89 - ninth place in a ten-team league, but the best record the franchise had managed in its first seven tries. The card went to press before a ball was thrown in 1969, so it promises nothing. What arrived was a pennant and a World Series title in the Mets' eighth season.
Ed Kranepool was born November 8, 1944, in the Bronx and starred at James Monroe High School before the expansion Mets signed him on June 27, 1962 for an $80,000 bonus. He debuted that September 22 at seventeen, the first teenager to play for the club, and was still on the roster in 1979 as the last man left from the original 1962 Mets. A left-handed first baseman who also worked the outfield, he spent all eighteen of his major league seasons in New York, the longest tenure in franchise history, and remains the Mets' all-time leader in games played with 1,853, alongside 1,418 hits, 118 home runs, 614 RBI and a .261 average. He was New York's lone All-Star representative in 1965 and homered in Game Three of the 1969 World Series, then reached the Series again with the 1973 National League champions. Late in his career 'Steady Eddie' became one of the game's most reliable pinch hitters, batting .396 off the bench from 1974 through 1978 and going 17-for-35 in 1974 for a .486 mark that still stands as the season record for pinch hitting. He later worked as a stockbroker and restaurateur, joined the New York Mets Hall of Fame in 1990, and died September 8, 2024, in Boca Raton, Florida.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac · MLB.com
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 288 | 3 | 23 | 127 | 72 | 44 | 8 | 11 | 0 |
| SGC | 10 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 6 | 0 | 1 | 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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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1969 Topps #381 card?
It is card #381 of the 664-card 1969 Topps Baseball set, picturing Ed Kranepool of the New York Mets.
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.