There appears to be a new record or personal-best set for die-hard baseball card collectors. Goldin Auctions has one of the top samples of the famed 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle baseball card which was a $300,000 high bid on Thursday evening – but updated pricing on Friday morning shows that there were 18 bids and the new high bid was $330,000.00.

BE ADVISED, AN UPDATED ARTICLE WITH FINAL SALES PRICES AND DATA HAS BEEN WRITTEN.

This Mickey Mantle card from the famous 1952 Topps set might not be worth as much as most of the Honus Wagner cards from the T206 tobacco baseball card set from 1909 with one Gold Auction fetching some $2.1 million. The Wagner card and a few other cards and memorabilia items sell for much more than the average sale price of this Mickey Mantle card. Still, to many baseball card collectors the 1952 Topps Mantle is the official face card of vintage baseball card collecting.

The 1952 Topps Mantle has many graded samples – over 1200 from the well known PSA grading service alone. Many samples of the card in various grades sell each year. What is rare is the number of cards graded in the pristine grades of 8 and higher (on a scale of 1 to 10) that come certified with a PSA grade and encapsulation.

As of the time this article published, there was less than 24 hours to go until the auction ended by absentee bidding and just over 24 hours until the live bidding ended at the National Sports Collectors Convention held in Chicago, Illinois. That means the card could go for even higher.

One issue driving the price up here on top of the quality of the card is that the card grading company matters on the realized prices. To collectors it usually matters if there is a PSA grade (1-10) from Collectors Universe, a BVG grading (1-10) from Beckett, or an SGC grade (10-100 & 1-10) from Sportscard Guaranty. And for ungraded cards of this magnitude, buyers and collectors simply will not pay up like this for an ungraded card.

Some collectors value one grading company’s grade much more than others — a 1952 Topps Mantle with BVG grading under Beckett as “8” sold for $81,000 or so back in 2013. The auction house Mile High had a SGC sample graded “86” sell for $62,417.90 in 2014.

Here are some other auction results in high-end PSA graded cards of the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card, sourced by each auction house and by VintageCardPrices.com (amounts do not include buyer premium and do not exclude auction fees):

• In 2014, a PSA 8 Mantle sold in a SCP Auctions lot with a listed sale price of $268,664.00.
• In 2013, Robert Edwards Auctions had a PSA 8.5 Mantle sold for $272,550.00.
• In 2006, a PSA 9 sample of the Mantle sold for $282,588.00 in a Memory Lane auction.

Back in 2001, a PSA graded “Gem Mint 10” by PSA went for a record breaking sale at the time of $275,000. That was in 2001, and a Mint 9 grade has a suggested market price (PSA/SMR) of $650,000 if one of the handful of samples comes up for sale.

ALSO READ: 10 Stocks to Own for the Next Decade

While it is impossible to ever know what the true record prices paid are if they take place in privately negotiated transactions, tracking sales of high-end cards on eBay or from public auction houses can be done.

Here is what does matter, even if a lot of the 1952 Topps cards ended up salvaged by employees and collectors outside of buying bubblegum cards from convenience and grocery stores — the price for a wrapped 1952 Topps pack cost a whopping 5-cents back in the day.

Maybe this will break the record for a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle in an auction or maybe it won’t. Either way, this is one of the outliers and will be referenced for years by high-end sports cards collectors.

Ken Goldin, founder of Goldin Auctions, responded with a statement on the pricing of this auction. He said:

This is currently the highest priced Mickey Mantle card publicly sold, any card, any grade. We are thrilled that everyone finds this card as special as we do. A well centered, perfect color 1952 Topps Mantle is a true rarity. We expect more bidding at the live auction tonight.

 

Thank you for reading! Have some feedback for us?
Contact the 24/7 Wall St. editorial team.