It has been almost 60 years since Topps released their 1966 baseball card set. This is my all-time favorite card set since 1966 was the year I began my lifelong following of baseball, the first year the Braves played in Atlanta, and the year I began collecting cards. Plus, I just like the look of them. 

There were 598 cards in the complete 1966 set, and as best I can reconcile, there were 561 different players depicted. There were 21 team cards; there was no Houston Astros card, but Topps issued two different cards for the Pittsburgh Pirates and Cleveland Indians. That leaves 577 cards. 

There were 20 manager cards, 12 league leader cards, and five combo player cards (Buc Belters, Astro Aces, etc.), leaving 540 cards. Then take out a whopping 12 Checklist cards, the bane of the young card collecting enthusiast, and you are down to 528 cards. 

There were 39 multiplayer rookie cards, most with two players and some with three, that pictured a total of 80 players. Deducting the 39 rookie cards leaves 489 cards, but adding back the 80 players gets the total number of players back up to 569. 

Topps released two versions of cards for six players—Dick Groat, Bob Heffner, Alex Johnson, Jerry Lumpe, Merritt Ranew, and Bob Uecker—and three versions of Don Landrum’s card, leaving 561 total players depicted. 

There were 29 Atlanta Braves cards in the 1966 set, depicting 30 individual players; there were two multiplayer rookie cards, a team card, and a card for manager Bobby Bragan. Twenty of the players appear without a cap, since during early printing, there was an outside chance the Braves would be playing in Milwaukee in 1966. Ed Mathews is wearing a cap on his card, but Topps airbrushed the letter from the front. Mack Jones appears in profile, so the letter isn’t visible on his cap. Henry Aaron, Bragan, Ken Johnson, Gene Oliver, Chi-Chi Olivo, and rookies Herb Hippauf and Arnie Umbach are wearing Atlanta Braves caps. 

The 1966 Topps Braves set contains four members of the Baseball Hall of Fame: Aaron, Mathews, Phil Niekro, and Joe Torre. 

I really wanted to get the cards of Braves stars like Aaron, Felipe Alou, and Torre. I hated it when I opened a pack and found a Johnny Blanchard, Chris Cannizzaro, or Dan Osinski card, since they never played for Atlanta. 

Cards of Hank Fischer, Billy O’Dell, and Lee Thomas were only slightly less disappointing to get since the Braves traded them away early in the season. 

As of today, 96 former major league players passed away in 2024, 19 of whom were on cards in the 1966 Topps set. 

Back in June, Willie Mays and Orlando Cepeda passed away within 10 days of each other; Pete Rose passed away at the end of September. From the 1966 Braves set, Denver Lemaster and Rico Carty died in 2024. Mays, at 93, was the oldest player from the set to die this year, while Ed Kranepool, at 79, was the youngest. 

Five players who passed away in 2024–Hank Allen, Mike Ferraro, Bud Harrelson, Ken Holtzman, and Gary Sutherland–were active in 1966, but did not have cards in this set. 

Two hundred twenty-five players from the 1966 Topps set are still alive. Elroy Face, at 96, is the oldest surviving member of the group. 

The kids like me who collected cards from the 1966 Topps set are growing old as well. And it seems that with the passing of each player from that group, a bit of my childhood dies with them.

(Most data on the 1966 Topps baseball card set are from Trading Card Database. Data on 2024 deaths of major league players are from Baseball Reference; at the time of this post, they did not have Charlie Maxwell and Lenny Randle in their database.)