A 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle rookie card graded PSA 8 sold this week for over two million dollars! Take a look at the price records this iconic card continues to break, and look back at the Mantle rookie we discovered under jars of pickles!
A price tag of $2,029,500 was the tally this week after the hammer dropped in Goldin Auctions for a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle rookie card graded PSA 8! This legendary baseball card continues to soar in price regardless of grade. Let's take a look at recent sales of a Mantle rookie in this grade, and remember an incredible story about a '52 Mickey discovered among jars of pickles!
1952 TOPPS MICKEY MANTLE
Mickey Mantle had one of the greatest baseball careers in the history of the game. Mantle lead the Yankee to 7 World Series championships, winning 3 MVP awards along the way. Being a Hall of Fame player and winning championships, especially in a big market like New York, tends to drive up the value of rookie cards. However, the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle commands top dollar not just for The Mick's accolades but also for a very obscure reason: most of his rookie cards were dumped in the ocean!
Mantle is card #311 in the 1952 Topps baseball set. That year Topps released their cards in different series, or batches of cards, to keep customers continuously buying their product. Imagine if you were a kid in 1952 with that saved all of your chore money and decided to buy all the packs your five and dime had on-hand; you'd build the whole set in a week and not buy any new cards the rest of the year! Topps released their cards in waves, and Mantle ended in the 6th series (cards numbered 311 to 407). The problem was the idea sort of backfired - by the time Mantle's card hit the stores, kids were buying football wax packs! Unable to move the product, up to 500 CASES of these high-numbered cards were dumped into the Ocean!
TWO-MILLION DOLLAR SALE
A 1952 Topps Mantle is valuable in ANY condition. THIS Mantle rookie looks like it sat in the owner's pocket of their jeans, got washed and dried, then put in some bike spokes. The sale price was still over $10,000! When the condition of the card goes up as does the price - by astronomical margins. Proof of this came just a few days ago when Goldin Auctions had a PSA 8 Mantle rookie realize a price of $2,029,500.00
PSA has graded 1,799 '52 Mantle cards so far. Only 35 cards have received a grade of PSA 8. Gold Auctions offered a PSA 8 Mantle in an auction that ended on May 22nd 2021 and the final price was $840,000. Then in June, Memory Lane had a PSA 8 Mantle sell for $2,112,000! If we only had Doc Brown DeLorean to when Heritage sold a PSA 8 in August of 2018 for $420,000.
The most expensive price for a Mickey Mantle rookie so far is 5.2 million dollars in a sale of one of the 6 copies graded PSA 9. For a while, that Mickey was the most expensive card ever sold! Currently only a T206 Honus Wagner card has been sold for more; that card sold for 6.6 million dollars
You're probably asking - how much would a PSA 10 cost? We have that answer and a wonderful story about a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle we purchased that was discovered hiding with jars of pickles!
THE "PICKELS" 1952 TOPPS MANTLE
Darren's wife, Andrea, reached out to us from Canada on the FREE APPRAISAL section of Just Collect.com, where, as you guessed it - we offer free appraisals on your collection. We were hooked from the first line: "My husband’s grandpa had a shoe box of old baseball cards in his cold room -like the shelf underneath the canned pickles."
We purchased the collection in a story that is too awesome not to share. Check out the "Pickles" Mantle story HERE. You can also read about more facts about this iconic card including the elusive PSA 10s!
What do you think the value will be on the next PSA 8, or even one of the PSA 9 or PSA 10 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle cards will be? Could a PSA 10 be worth 20 million dollars?
If you have a Mickey Mantle rookie card or a vintage collection you'd like to sell, we're always buying and we'd love to hear from you!
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Just Collect is always buying vintage sports and non-sports cards from 1879 to 1979 as well as select modern cards. If you have a collection that you are considering selling, contact us today to discuss or get our industry-leading purchase offer. If you have a collection that you want appraised, please contact us and we would be happy to discuss your collection and help you understand the real cash value of your collection in the current marketplace. Check out the Just Collect buy list blog here.
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