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Hundreds of Vintage Baseball Cards including Mickey Mantle Purchased

1950's Topps and Bowman Cards Include Mantle, Mays, Aaron, and Jackie Robinson!

November 24, 2024

Hundreds of vintage baseball cards including STUNNING examples of Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron, Jackie Robinson, and more legends, have proudly been purchased by Just Collect.

Last year, a lady named Andrea had a friend that was walking in town where our Just Collect office is located. When Andrea's friend realized that we buy vintage cards, they told Andrea about our free appraisal. Andrea's late husband was an avid collector and had a big collection of vintage cards. Andrea brought the collection into our office for us to review. Not long after, we reached out a deal to purchase all of the vintage football cards including a Johnny Unitas rookie card. You can read the entire story and see that football collection here. Today, we proudly show you the collection of vintage baseball cards we also purchased from Andrea!

THE BASEBALL CARD COLLECTION

Much like the vintage football cards, each of the baseball cards are in excellent condition! Remember, condition is VERY important when determining the value of your sports cards. Using a grading scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being Gem Mint, perfect, a change in just one numerical grade could alter the value of your card by thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars!

In the slide show below, you can 1953 Bowman Black and White cards in the first photo. Bowman released a Black and White, and a Color set in 1953. The Black and White set consists of 64 cards and the Color set has 160 cards. One of the cards from the Black and White set is Casey Stengel. As a manager, Stengel won seven World Series titles, including five in a row from 1949-1953. In the next two photos you'll find 1953 Bowman Color. In the center is a young Mickey Mantle. The Mick was just 21 back in 1953 and just coming into his own on the diamond. Next to Mantle is one of the more iconic and desired cards! Pee Wee Reese can be seen jumping, mid-throw. Today, just about every baseball card features an action shot, but back in the 1950's, players are simply posing for pictures.

Photos four and five are from the 1954 Bowman baseball set. The '54 set has 224 cards and includes Mickey Mantle. Topps did not have a contract with Mantle to print cards so if you're looking for a 1954 Mantle card, Bowman is THE card to get! A few other Hall of Fame players in Andrea's collection from this release are Willie Mays, Roy Campanella, Yogi Berra, and Duke Snider.

Moving up the Bowman years comes the 1955 set. In photos five and six are cards from this "TV" design. Bowman released 320 cards in 1955 with a number of stars. Andrea had all the big names! Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks, Ed Mathews, Al Kaline - pretty much the Hall of Fame right here.

Topps is represented next with the spectacular 1956 Topps set. With 340 cards to the set, each card is on a horizontal design with both a portrait and an action shot. More of the finest ever to take the field can be seen in this collection with Ted Williams, Sandy Koufax, Roberto Clemente, and Jackie Robinson!

The hits just keep getting better. In photos ten and eleven are 1957 Topps cards. This year, Topps made 407 cards to a set. While Mantle, Mays, Aaron, and Ted Williams jump off the page, our eyes are glues to the Frank Robinson and Brooks Robinson rookie cards! Frank Robinson was the first player to win an MVP award in both leagues, earning the award in 1961 with the Reds and 1966 with the Orioles. Until 2024 when Shohei Ohtani won the MVP with the Dodgers, Robinson was the ONLY player ever to do win the award in both the AL and the NL. Brooks Robinson won an MVP himself in 1964, but The Human Vacuum Cleaner was known for his defense; Brooks won 16 consecutive Gold Glove awards from 1960-1975.

The final two photos feature cards from the 1958 Topps set. Among the 494-card set are those heroes, Mantle, Aaron, Mays, and more, but so is the rookie card of Roger Maris. Before setting the home run record as a Yankee, Maris was with Cleveland. Though, we're Yankees fans here in New Jersey, and had to set Maris next to Mantle in the photo!

Some of these cards look as if they came fresh out of a wax pack. Remember riding your bike to local gas station (I went to Stewart's in Upstate, New York!), picking up a pack for 15 cents, maybe a quarter, and ripping that open? We chewed that gum and read all the stats right off the back of each card. Before the Internet, we had to read the backs of each baseball card to know stats. To this day, I'll remember that Don Mattingly has 1,099 career RBI thanks to his final Topps card.

Here is a slide show of the collection:

1953 Bowman Black and White with Stengal

1957 Topps Brooks Mantle Clemente Koufax

APPRAISAL AND PURCHASE

We offered Andrea our FREE appraisal right at our office. The retail stores are focused on selling modern products and simply don't have the time or the knowledge to carefully evaluate vintage collections. This is where we are happy to help you. With decades of experience handling and purchasing collections, we take the time to treat your collection with the care it deserves. We made Andrea a fair offer for her baseball cards just as we did for her football cards, and she accepted. We then paid Andrea how she wanted to be paid. When you choose to sell your collection to Just Collect, we can pay you in cash, company check, or wire transfer.

If you're too far away from our office to come in-person, we offer many ways to evaluate your collection! You can meet us at a convention such as The Philly Show or The National. You could ship your cards like Katie did with her Five Michael Jordan rookie cards. We also travel for large collections much as we did for the Silver Cloud Collection from Washington. Below, read how you can reach out to us any time for your free appraisal.

WE ARE ALWAYS BUYING

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.

We always offer a FREE APPRAISAL for your collection here at the Just Collect site. Just click here:

We offer may ways to evaluate your cards other than or using our website, too.

Travel to Us

If you can make the trip here like the son from my hometown did for this collection- we can make a deal at the office. We once met a father-son duo that drove eight hours from Virginia to meet us to sell a Michael Jordan rookie card stored in Tupperware since 1986 - great read here.

Come to convention

We keep a LIST of card shows we'll be attending. Come stop by the Just Collect table and chat.

Meet in-person

If you have a valuable collection and want us to come to you, we'll hop on the next plane out.

Meet in New York City

If you're near New York City and would like to meet in a public place, our owner, Leighton, would be happy to meet you; read all the information here.

SHIP your collection

If you choose to mail your cards for an appraisal, we will evaluate your cards for FREE still. If you choose not to sell the cards, we'll ship them back shipping fees paid by us! We can offer our FedEx account with 2-day shipping, fully insured, all covered by us. Simply contact the office to set up this option.

OUR BUYING PHILOSOPHY

We've run into a wide range of people and collections over the last 25 years. Although Just Collect is known for buying vintage sports cards and especially vintage baseball cards, we are also extremely interested in buying non-sports cards, too!

Every collection and every collector is different and we treat EVERY collection with the respect and attention that we show for our own collections. We understand that many have put their heart and souls into building their collections. So when you're ready to sell, we understand the feelings that you're going through and will work with you to help you reach a decision that is a WIN/WIN, because if you're not happy, we're not happy.