General Forum

Which player has the least amount of cards available. I came across Phil Mankowski. He only has 12 cards listed on the baseball database. Does anyone else have less?

Was quite surprised to see that Razor Shines had as many cards as he did in the database.  If it weren't for the sn1 card for Mankowski he would be tied at 11 with Shooty Babbitt.

There are several guys from the 1980s and 1990s (and still today) that only have a minor league release or two.

One of them is someone I collect, Travis Bolin (a former summer teammate of mine in high school).

Dwight Carter only has one, a 1975 Clinton Pilots TCMA issue. And I guarantee he isn't the only person with just one - I simply went to an early team set of the Clinton Pilots and clicked on names until I found one. He was the second name I clicked on. 

If you are looking at major releases, or MLB cards only, you might have a different conversation. But I imagine that there are several individuals with one card, and many with two or three.

Night Owl cards has a recurring blog post on one-card wonders. https://nightowlcards.blogspot.com/2021/06/one-card-wonders-update-11.html

I checked one person he mentioned and he has only 3 cards on TCDB, https://www.tcdb.com/Person.cfm/pid/823/Sheldon-Burnside

There are many players from the 1970s and earlier that only have their lone pro Rookie Card (even if they were a Vet when the card was released). I suppose that happens more often the farther back you go as many players from the Tobacco years only have one card.

I suposse there may be a few modern players that had very short careers without any cards. I wonder if there actually are any pro players that NEVER had any cards? That might have been more common and possible ages ago before all these minor league cards and Prospect cards from player's college years. Players from the Tobacco card years often only had one card if any and some of them later got posthumous cards in commemorative sets like The Sports News Conlon sets from the 1980s.

One of my favorite ONLY ONE card players is Ted Vactor Washington Redskins 1971 Topps Football. On a personal note I went to elementary school with his eldest son Tori. Tori traded 5 or 6 other Skins cards to me for the card I had of his father.  I was reluctant to make the trade then, in later years I have gotten a couple of those cards so I have at least 2 of them somewhere. He "super collected" cards of his dad before that was even a term or a thing. I vaguely recall one of the 5 or 6 cards I got was a 1973 card of Norm Snead in that trade one of my first 73 Topps Football cards.

Bruce look has 3 and they are all reprints of 1969 Topps.

I'm sure there are several old time players that were good enough to have 1 card made but not good enough to have cards made after their playing career.

There is a player named Gordie Sundin who pitched one game for the Orioles in 1956. His only card is in a 1991 set that contained all the Orioles who ever played for the team up to that year. I bet that set probably has a few other cards like him. 
 

https://www.tcdb.com/Person.cfm/pid/99539/Gordie-Sundin

Razor Shines had a decent minor league coaching / managing career after retiring as a player.  If you'd like to try naming all the teams he played and coached for, take my Sporcle quiz:  https://www.sporcle.com/games/Hop_On_Pop/career-retrospective---razor-shines

Fun fact, you're missing a couple years on your quiz. In 1997 - 1998, Razor helped coach my high school baseball team.

BucCollector wrote:

Razor Shines had a decent minor league coaching / managing career after retiring as a player.  If you'd like to try naming all the teams he played and coached for, take my Sporcle quiz:  https://www.sporcle.com/games/Hop_On_Pop/career-retrospective---razor-shines