⚾ Graded 1971 Topps Steve Carlton #55 Baseball Card SGC 3 Very Good — An SGC 3 Very Good-Grade 1971 Topps Black Border Vintage Card for "Lefty," the Four-Time Cy Young Award Winner Who Pitched 329 Career Victories, Struck Out 4,136 Batters, and Stands as One of the Greatest Left-Handed Pitchers in the History of Baseball — Photographed Here in His St. Louis Cardinals Uniform, the Year Before He Would Be Traded to Philadelphia and Begin the Most Dominant Chapter of His Career

⚾ The 1971 Topps set is one of the most visually distinctive card sets in baseball's collecting history — defined by the black borders that frame each card's photography, a design choice that gave the set an elegance and boldness that separated it from the white-bordered sets of prior years. The black border design also made the set notoriously difficult to maintain in high grades, since even minor handling causes the dark edges to show wear almost immediately, meaning that high-grade examples of 1971 Topps are among the most genuinely scarce vintage cards in the hobby by comparison to their production volumes. An SGC 3 Very Good example of this Steve Carlton card represents a collector-grade piece of the set that captures the card as it has been kept and handled across more than five decades of baseball history.

⚾ Carlton appears on this card in his St. Louis Cardinals uniform — the franchise where he spent his first seven professional seasons and where the foundation of his Hall of Fame career was established. He was born on December 22, 1944, in Miami, Florida, and developed his craft in the Cardinals organization before emerging as a front-line starter with one of the most devastating sliders the sport had ever seen. By 1971 — the year this card was produced — he was already recognized as one of the premier left-handers in the National League, a pitcher whose combination of a moving fastball and the slider that would later become famous had established him as a pitcher opposing lineups genuinely feared.

⚾ The trade that sent him to the Philadelphia Phillies before the 1972 season was one of the most consequential in baseball history. What followed in Philadelphia was one of the greatest individual pitching seasons ever recorded: Carlton won 27 games for a Phillies team that won only 59, accounting for nearly 46 percent of his team's victories in a statistical performance that has not been replicated before or since. He won the first of his four Cy Young Awards that season. He would win three more — in 1977, 1980, and 1982 — making him one of only two pitchers to win four career Cy Young Awards at the time of his retirement.

⚾ The 1980 World Series championship with Philadelphia, his 329 career victories, and his 4,136 career strikeouts — second all-time at the time of his retirement — placed him in the first ballot of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1994, where he was inducted in the class that recognized one of the most dominant left-handed pitching careers the sport has ever produced. SGC (Sportscard Guaranty Corporation) SGC 3 Very Good reflects the authentic, handled, collected condition of a vintage 1971 Topps card that has traveled through five decades of baseball history. Condition: NOS.

⚾ Steve "Lefty" Carlton. Miami, Florida. St. Louis Cardinals & Philadelphia Phillies. 4x Cy Young Award (1972, 1977, 1980, 1982). 329 Career Wins. 4,136 Career Strikeouts. 1980 World Series Champion. 10x All-Star. Baseball Hall of Fame Class of 1994. 1971 Topps #55 Baseball Card. SGC 3 Very Good. Hall of Fame Sports Memorabilia. Condition: NOS.