Willie McCovey's 1960 Topps Rookie Card Helps a Son Keep His Father's Memory Alive

A son's desire to acquire one of his late father's grail baseball cards makes the 1960 Topps rookie card of Hall of Fame slugger Willie McCovey significant and relevant 65 years after its release.

This 1960 Willie McCovey rookie card was graded a 1 (Poor) by SGC in 2023. The card is significant and relevant 65 years after it was released by Topps. / SGC

I want the sports cards in my collection to tell a story. The cardboard treasures I don’t plan on parting with include players I liked growing up, current players I enjoy watching, cards from packs I’ve pulled or something I’ve picked up on my travels as a sports writer.

Willie McCovey doesn’t check any of those boxes. Still, the 1960 Topps rookie card of the San Francisco Giants slugger (#316), which turns 65 in 2025, is in my collection because it was a grail card for someone who inspired my passion for collecting.

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My dad owned a card shop in the early 1990s, the height of the junk wax era. He didn’t have an extensive personal collection, and while I remember McCovey’s rookie card was one he treasured after he got it, the way he lost it left a significant impression on me.

Card shop owners deal with theft too often, and one of my dad’s employees walked off the job with a few cards in tow. Hank Aaron and Willie Mays cards were among the losses, but the McCovey theft cut the deepest.

I never knew why he liked that card and never thought to ask him. My dad never talked about the incident and, sadly, passed away in 2013 without ever owning another McCovey rookie card.

The back of Willie McCovey's 1960 Topps card highlights some of the brightest moments during the Hall of Fame first baseman's rookie season with the San Francisco Giants. / SGC

My dad’s shop closed in 1994. I collected on and off throughout the years, but I made it a point to stick around when I got back into the hobby in 2021.

Fast forward to the summer of 2023, the process of checking cards off my must-have vintage list was in full swing. It wasn’t long after picking up my first Mickey Mantle card (a 1962 Post Cereal hand-cut card that only cost a few dollars because of some extensive paper loss) that I started thinking long and hard about getting a McCovey rookie.

The sports card hobby is my way of remaining connected to my dad. The more I thought about him and the McCovey card, I knew my collection wouldn’t be complete without one.

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My dad inspired a lot of my collection. I remember browsing the showcases in his shop and being mesmerized by the 1984 Topps football rookie cards of John Elway (#63) and Dan Marino (#123), which is why I've got copies of them stashed away with the cards that aren’t for sale.

The man nicknamed “Stretch,” a first-ballot Hall of Fame selection in 1986 who led the National League in home runs three times (1963, 1968 and 1969, with a career-high 45) and was named NL MVP in 1968, found a home alongside Jeff Bagwell, Ken Griffey Jr., Mike Piazza and my boyhood heroes.

I eventually came upon an eBay listing for two cards from the 1960 Topps set — McCovey’s base rookie card and his All-Star card (#554).

The search was over. I pulled the trigger, spending $58.15 on the two cards that showed up in my mailbox on June 24, 2023.

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Still, I wanted to be sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the McCovey card in my possession was the real deal. Thankfully, a July 2023 work trip to the Dallas area opened the door to attending my first Dallas Card Show. Since one of my few regrets before my dad died was that we never went back to a show (I hadn’t been to a show the size of the Dallas extravaganza since I was in grade school), it was a fitting setting to submit cards for grading for the first time.

When my 13-card submission arrived from SGC a few weeks later, there it was—a Willie McCovey rookie card that had seen better days and was stabbed with a numerical grade of 1 (Poor).

I can’t tell the story of my love for the hobby without mentioning McCovey’s first card in the Topps flagship series. I own cards that are more valuable and more well-known than the McCovey rookie, but there aren’t many that mean as much to me as the one my dad would be proud to know is in my collection.