1969 Topps #242 Frank Kostro
About Frank Kostro
1969 Topps #242, a third-series card, catches Kostro in the one year he never left a major-league roster. A .343 spring earned him a spot on Minnesota's 1968 Opening Day club - 'So far I've played right, left and first base, and I'm Polish,' he said as camp broke. 'Does that make me a utility Pole?' - and then the waiting began. He got into 63 games but started only 15 in the field, eight in left, six in right and one at first, batting .241 with 26 hits in 108 at-bats and going 7-for-35 as a pinch-hitter. Billy Martin sent him to Denver the next spring; two hitless September at-bats in 1969 ended his career.
Frank Jerry Kostro was born on August 4, 1937 in Windber, Pennsylvania, and grew up in the coal-mining community of Blough, earning 11 varsity letters at nearby Forbes High School. He accepted a combined football-basketball scholarship from Michigan rather than the Tigers' first offer, then left school after one semester when his father was hurt in a mine accident and signed with Detroit in 1956. Scouts loved his bat and doubted his glove, and he spent 14 professional seasons in North America, hitting .303 in nearly 1,200 minor-league games for Jamestown, Durham, Birmingham, Denver and other stops. In the majors he played 266 games over seven seasons (1962-65, 1967-69) for the Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Angels and Minnesota Twins, starting only 80 of them, at five positions, and batting .244 with 114 hits and five home runs. Sent down in June 1965, he missed the Twins' World Series roster but was voted a partial share by his teammates and came away with a ring. He finished in Japan with the Hankyu Braves in 1970, then built an insurance business in Denver, served on the Harmon Killebrew Foundation board, and was inducted into the Cambria County Sports Hall of Fame in 2004.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 213 | 5 | 43 | 113 | 31 | 11 | 5 | 5 | 0 |
| SGC | 5 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 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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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1969 Topps #242 card?
It is card #242 of the 664-card 1969 Topps Baseball set, picturing Frank Kostro of the Minnesota Twins.
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.