In the weeks after Mickey Mantle left baseball, kids reached for packs of 1969 Topps Baseball and found his last card. His retirement announcement had come too late to pull him from production but few cared. It kind of provided a cap on Mantle’s time in baseball with the back showing no fancy prose, just a big block of incredible career statistics. Sharp-eyed collectors who bought a lot of cards that year also noticed something else. Not all of those ’69 Mantle cards looked alike. While most had his name in yellow letters, mixed in was what we now know as the “white letter variation” with Mantle’s first and last name on the front printed in all white. It didn’t take long for the card to become a highly sought after piece of history. And Mantle wasn’t alone. There are 23 cards in the fifth series that have white letter versions. Why it happened is a mystery but some have speculated it was simply an ink problem that cropped up during the printing process. Some have said the white letters were exclusive to rack packs. This week we are offering a rare chance to own a 1969 Topps Mantle White Letter variation in a very respectable PSA 5 grade. Mantle’s card is by far the most popular of the 23 cards that carry the variation. It’s also the most expensive. There are five times as many standard versions of the Mantle card than there are white letter versions --with fewer than 400 better examples of this card in PSA’s Population Report. Mantle collectors, those who collect the white letter variations in the ’69 set, Hall of Fame player collectors and investors all chase this card. It’s always fun to be able to offer one to the public because there is never a shortage of interest in this unique quirk from the Mick’s Topps farewell.
