#2 1964 N.L. Batting Leaders - Clemente, Carty & Aaron

Beginning in 1961, Topps started including league leader cards in its sets and there are 12 league leaders cards kicking off the 1965 Topps set.

Building the Set
December 25, 2019 from San Diego, CA - Card #29

Santa purchased this card from Kit Young Cards in San Diego for $35 and wrapped it up for Doug to find under the tree on Christmas morning.  Santa usually surprised me with a "big" card on Christmas morning and I love continuing that tradition now with Doug.  To date, this is the most expensive card we've added to our set.

This is also one of eight cards we added to our set this past Christmas.

The Card
Roberto Clemente (#160) captured four batting titles in 1961, 1964, 1965 and 1967, and Rico Carty (#305) would earn his first and only batting title in 1970.  Henry Aaron (#170) had previously won two batting titles in 1956 and 1959.  Clemente never hit below .333 during the 1964 season, hitting that low point on June 24th.

I had thought it would be interesting to go through the players listed on the back to see how many of them made it into the 1965 Topps set . . . and then I thought better of that exercise as it would have been fairly time consuming.  I'm impressed that the two players who hit .241 - Julian Javier (#447) and Billy Cowan (#186) - made their way onto the back of the card.

Pirates Team Set / Braves Team Set

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